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OUTLINES 



UNIVERSAL HISTORY, 



THE CREATION OF THE WORLD 



THE PRESENT TIME. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 

OF y- 

DR. GEORGE WEBER, 

ii 

PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF THE HIGH SCHOOL OF HEIDELBERG, 
BY 

DR. M. BEHR, 

PROFESSOR OF GERMAN LITERATURE IN WINCHESTER COLLEGE. 






LONDON: 

WHITTAKER AND CO. AVE MARIA LANE. 

1851. 



.\Al3G 
WSJ 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



The plan that has prevailed in the composition of the following 
work will be best gathered from the words of the author, in his 
preface to the German edition. " Influenced by the considera- 
tion that a Guide to History can only answer its object when it 
awakens the interest of the scholar, stimulates his desire for 
information, and excites his zeal for inquiry, I have every 
where/' writes he, " arrayed the historical material in a narra- 
tive form, and have endeavoured to give clearness, consistency, 
and animation to the form itself. My effort has been so to 
bring together the events of the world's history in their more 
prominent aspects and decisive moments, that the reader may 
carry away a clear idea of them, that the important facts may 
exhibit themselves with their causes and consequences, and thus 
be more strongly impressed upon the imagination, and conse- 
quently upon the memory ; and that the course of the narrative 
may be neither disturbed nor broken by interpolations and 
remarks which might require a further explanation. Far from 
following the usual course of compendiums, text books, and 
outlines, and heaping up a mass of materials in the smallest 
possible space, and thus forming a kind of skeleton register of 
the events of history as a resting point for the memory, I have 
rather endeavoured to limit my materials, and giving place only 
to the most important and influential, to arrange those in his- 
torical succession." ..." Mere historical events with names and 
dates are not retained by the memory, neither do they possess 
any instructive or educative power ; it is only when the historical 
fact is presented in combination with other objects, so that the 



VI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

imagination and thinking faculty are both employed upon it, 
that it permanently impresses itself upon the mind of youth." 

A Text Booh of History written on the principles thus sug- 
gested, appeared to the translator to be a desideratum in Eng- 
lish literature, and the great reputation of Weber as an historian 
seemed a guarantee that a work proceeding from his pen would 
be superior in point of execution to the bulk of historical com- 
pilations at present in use. 

It may be essential to add that the book is written through- 
out in a spirit of orthodox Protestantism, and is entirely 
untinctured with the neology and infidelity at this time so 
prevalent in Germany. 

"Winchester, June 1851. 



ERRATA. 

Page 23, line 21, et seqq.for Donau read Danube. 
364, line C from bottom, for April read March. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST BOOK. 

HISTORY OE THE ANCIENT WORLD. 



INTRODUCTION, p. 1—5. 
I. § 1. The first race of Men, p. 1. II. § 2. The manner of living among the 
earliest races, p. 2. III. § 3. Forms of government ; distinction of Castes, p. 2. IV. 
§ 4. The religion of the heathen world, p. 3. 

A. THE EASTERN RACES, p. 5—24. 

I. § 5. The Asiatics, p. 5. II. § 6. The Chinese, p. 6. III. § 7- The Indians, p. 7- 
§ 8. Their religion, literature, art, p. 8. IV. Babylonians and Assyrians, p. 10. § 9. 
Nimrod, Semiramis, Salmanasser. § 10. The Chaldeans in Babylon; Nebuchad- 
nezzar. V. Egyptians, p. 11. § 1 1 . Division of Egypt. § 12. Religion and arts. 
§ 13. History. VI. Phoenicians, p. 14. § 14. Navigation, commerce, discoveries. 
§ 15. History of Tyre and Sidon. VII. The people of Israel, p. 15—20. § 16. The 
patriarchs. § 17. Exodus. § 18. Moses as lawgiver. § 19. Division of the pro- 
mised land. § 20. The Judges. § 21. Samuel and Saul. § 22. David ; Solo- 
mon ; division of the kingdom. § 23. Worship of idols ; the prophets. § 24. The 
Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. VIII. Medes and Persians, p. 19 — 24. 
§ 25. Zoroaster's religious system. § 26. Astyages and Cyrus. § 27- Croesus of 
Lydia. § 28. Death of Cyrus. § 29. Cambyses ; Ammonium. § 30. Darius. 
§ 31. Manners and customs of the Persians. 

B. HISTORY OP GREECE, p. 24—68. 

I, Geographical Survey, p. 24—26. § 32. a. The Greek Continent, p. 24. § 33. 
b. The Greek Islands, p. 25. II. § 34. The religion of the Greeks, p. 26. 

I. GREECE BEFORE THE PERSIAN WAR, p. 27—31. 
I. The time of the Trojan war, p. 27- § 35. Pelasgi ; eastern immigration. § 36. 
Hellenic races ; expedition of the Argonauts. § 37. Trojan war. § 38. Homer ; 
epic poetry. § 39- Immigration of the Dorians ; Codrus. § 40. Colonies. 



Mil CONTENTS. 

2. The period of the wise men and lawgivers, p. 31. a. General view. § 41. 
Greeks and barbarians. § 42. Amphictyonic council ; Delphic oracle ; Olympic 
games. b. Lycurgus the Spartan lawgiver, p. 32. § 43. Laws of Lycurgus. 
a. Institutions of state. b. Mode of life. § 44. War with the Messenians. 

c. Solon, the lawgiver of the Athenians, p. 35. § 45. Draco ; laws of Solon. 

d. The tyrants, p. 36. § 4G. Their origin. § 47. Periander of Corinth ; Polycrates 
of Samos ; Pisistratus of Athens. § 48. The seven wise men ; Pythagoras. § 49. 

e. Lyric poetry. 

II. THE FLOURISHING PERIOD OF GREECE, p. 39. 
1. The Persian war. § 50. Insurrection of the Greeks of Asia Minor. § 51. 
Battle of Marathon. § 52. Aristides and Themistocles. § 53. Thermopylae. §54. 
Salamis. § 55. Plattea; Mycale ; Eurymedon. 2. The supremacy of Athens, and 
the age of Pericles, p. 44. § 5G. Pausanias, the traitor. § 57. Deaths of Themis- 
tocles and Aristides. § 58. Cimon ; Pericles. 3. The Peloponnesian war (b.c. 431 — 
404), p. 46. § 59. Origin of the war. § 60. The war to the peace of Nicias. 
§ 61. Alcibiades; battle of Mantinaea. § 62. Disasters of the Athenians in Sicily. 
§ 63. Death of Alcibiades. § 64. The fall of Athens ; the thirty tyrants. 4. So- 
crates, p. 49. § 65. Sophists ; Socrates ; Plato ; Xenophon. 5. § 66. The retreat 
of the ten thousand (b.c. 400), p. 50. 6. The time of Agesilaus and Epaminondas. 
§ 67. The Corinthian war and the peace of Antalcidas. § 68. Expedition against 
Olynthus and siege of Thebes. § 69. The Theban war and the battle of Leuctra. 
§ 70- Epaminondas in Peloponnesus ; battle of Mantintea. 7- The most flourishing 
period of Greece in literature and the arts. § 71 • Dramatic poetry; iEsehylus ; 
Sophocles; Euripides; Aristophanes. § 72. Prose literature ; Plato; Herodotus; 
Thucydides ; Xenophon. § 73- Rhetoric ; Isocrates ; Demosthenes ; JEschines. 
§ 74. The fine arts of the Greeks. 

II. THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD, p. 57. 

1. Philip of Macedon (b.c. 361—336). § 75. Character of Philip. § 76. The 
Sacred war. § 77- Battle of Cheeronea ; Philip's death. 2. Alexander the Great, 
p. 59. § 78. Fall of Thebes. § 79. Battle of Granicus. § 80. Battle of Issus. 
§ 81. Tyre and Alexandria. § 82. Arbela and Gaugemala. § 83. Expedition into 
Bactria. § 84. March to India. § 85. Last years of Alexander. 

THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD, p. 63. 

§ 86. a. Alexander's successors. b. Greece's last struggle ; the Achaian league, p. 
64. § 87- Athens ; Phocion ; Demosthenes ; Demetrius. § 88. Sparta and the Achaian 
league. § 89. c. The Ptolemies and the Seleucidae, p. 65 § 90. d. The Jews 
under the Maccabees, p. 66. e. State of civilization during the Alexandrian period, 
p. 67. § 91. Theocritus ; Stoics and Epicureans. 

C. THE HISTOBY OE SOME, p. 69. 

§ 92. The races and institutions of ancient Italy. 

I. ROME UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF KINGS AND 
PATRICIANS, p. 70- 
1. Rome under the kings (b.c. 753—509). § 93. Rome built. § 94. Rome 
under Romulus. § 95. Numa Pompilius. § 96. Tullus Hostilius and Ancus 
Marcius ; origin of the plebeians. § 97- Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius. 
§ 98. Tarcpiinius Superbus. 2. Rome as a republic under the patricians, p. 73. 
a. Horatius Codes ; the tribunes ; Coriolanus. § 99. Contest between the republi- 



CONTENTS. IX 

cans and Porsenna and Tarquin. § 100. Emigration to the sacred hill; Coriolanus. 
b. The Fabii; Cincinnatus ; the decemvirs, p. 75. § 101. War with theVeians and 
iEqui. § 102. Agrarian law ; Sp. Cassius. § 103. The decemvirs. § 104. Mili- 
tary tribunes and censors. c. Sack of Rome by the Gauls (b.c. 389), and the laws 
of Licinius Stolo (b.c. 366), p. 77- § 105. Taking of Veii by Camillus. § 106. 
Brennus in Rome. § 107- M. Manlius and the laws of L. Stolo. 

II. ROME'S HEROIC PERIOD, p. 79- 

1. The time of the war with the Samnites, and the battles with Pyrrhus. § 108. 
First Samnite war. § 109. War with the Latins. § 110. Second Samnite war; 
Caudinian passes ; Sentinum. § 111. War with Tarentum and Pyrrhus. 2. The 
time of the Punic wars, p. 81. a. The first Punic war (b.c. 263-241). § 112. 
Carthage; Agathocles ; the Mamertines. § 113. Regulus. § 114. Hamilcar Bar- 
cas; termination of the first Punic war. b. The second Punic war (b.c. 218 — 202), 
p. 83. § 115. Sicily and Gallia Cisalpina Roman provinces. § 116. Saguntum. 
§ 117. Hannibal's passage over the Alps and through Italy. § 118. Fabius Maxi- 
mus and the battle of Cannae. § 119. Capua; Syracuse ; Tarentum. § 120. Has- 
drubal's defeat on the Metaurus. § 121. Zama. c. Macedonia conquered ; Corinth 
and Carthage destroyed, p. 87- § 122. Philip II. and Antiochus III. subdued by 
the Romans. § 123. Battle of Pydna and destruction of Corinth. § 124. Destruc- 
tion of Carthage in the third Punic war. d. The manners and culture of the 
Romans, p. 90. § 125. Contest between Conservatism and progress ; Plautus ; 
Terence ; Cato. 

III. ROME'S DEGENERACY, p. 91. 

1. Numantia ; Tiberius; Caius Gracchus. § 126. Rome's government of her 
provinces ; Numantia's insurrection and fall. § 127. Tiberius Gracchus. § 128. 
Caius Gracchus. 2. The times of Marius and Sylla, p. 93. § 129. The Jugurthine 
war. § 130. Cimbri and Teutones. § 131. The Social war. § 132. The first 
Mithridatic war. § 133. The first civil war ; death of Marius. § 134. The Corne- 
lian law and Sylla's death. 3. The times of Cneius Pompey and M. Tullius Cicero, 
. p. 97. § 135. Sertorius. § 136. The Servile war. § 137- War against the 
pirates. § 138. The second Mithridatic war. § 139. Catiline's conspiracy. 4. The 
times of Caius Julius Caesar, p. 99. § 140. The triumvirate. § 141. Caesar's wars 
in Gaul. § 142. The second civil war. § 143. Caesar's victories. § 144. Caesar's 
death. 5. The last years of the republic, p. 102. ' § 145. The second triumvirate ; 
Cicero's death. § 146. Philippi. § 147. Actium. 

IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE, p. 103. 

1. The times of Caesar Octavianus Augustus, p. 103. § 148. Rome's golden age. 
§ 149. Roman literature. 2. The struggles of the Germans for liberty, p. 105. 
§ 150. Hermann's victory in the Teutoburger forest. § 151. Germanicus. § 152. 
Tacitus on the manners and institutions of the Germans. 3. The Caesars of the 
Augustine race, p. 106. § 153. Tiberius. § 154. Caligula; Claudius. § 155. 
Nero. § 156. Galba ; Otho ; Vitellius. 4. The Flavii and Antonines, p. 109. 
§ 157. Vespasian. § 158. The destruction of Jerusalem ; destruction of the Jewish 
state. § 159. Britain conquered by Agricola. § 160. Titus. § 161. Domitian ; 
Nerva; Trajan. § 162. Adrian ; Plutarch. § 163. Antoninus Pius ; Marcus Aure- 
lius. § 164. Cultivation and morals. 5. Rome under military government, p. 1 12. 
§ 165. Commodus ; Pertinax ; Septimius Severus. § 166. Caracalla ; Heliogabalus ; 
Alexander Severus. § 167- Philippus Arabus ; Decius ; Gallienus. ' § 168. Aure- 
lian. § 169. Tacitus; Probus; Carus. § 170. Time of Diocletian. § 171. Con- 
stantine's victory at the Milvian bridge and sole empire. 



X CONTENTS. 

SECOND BOOK. 

MIGKATION OF NATIONS AND THE MIDDLE AGE. 

A. MIGRATION OF NATIONS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF 
MONOTHEISM. 

I. THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVER PAGANISM. 

1. The Christian Church of the first century. § 172. Persecutions of the Chris- 
tians. 2. Constantine the Great and Julian the Apostate. § 173. Constantine's 
proceedings in Church and state. § 174. Arianism ; Augustine; the fathers of the 
Church. § 175- Julian the Apostate. 

II. THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS, p. 119—127. 

1. Theodosius the Great. § 176. Huns and West Goths. 2. West Goths ; Bur- 
gundians and Vandals, p. 120. § 177- Alaric ; Stilicho ; Radagais. § 178- Alaric 
in Italy. § 179. The Vandals in Africa. 3. Attila king of the Huns (a.d. 450), 
p. 122. § 180. Battle with the Huns; Aquileja. 4. § 181. Destruction of the 
Western Roman empire (a.d. 476), p. 122. 5. § 182. Theodoric the Ostrogoth 
(a.d. 500), p. 123. G. Clodion, king of the Franks and the Merovingians, p. 123. 
§ 183. Battle of Zulpich. § 184. The Merovingians and their Mayor of the palace. 
7. § 185. The Anglo-Saxons, p. 124. 8. The Byzantine empire and the Longobards, 
p. 125. § 186. The court; Justinian. § 187. Subjection of the Vandals and the 
Ostrogoths. § 188. Alboin. § 189. The Iconoclasts and the Iconoduli. 

III. MOHAMMED AND THE ARABIANS, p. 127—131. 

§ 190. Arabia. § 191. Mohammed the prophet. § 192. The Mohammedans in 
Persia and Egypt. § 193. Ali and the Ommiades. § 194. The Arabs in Spain and 
France. § 195. The Abbassides in Bagdad. § 196. The battles between Christians 
and Mohammedans in Spain. § 197- Arab cultivation and literature. 

B. THE MIDDLE AGE. 

I. THE PERIOD OF THE CARLO VINGI, p. 131—135. 

I. Pepin the Little (a.d. 752— 768) ; Charlemagne (768—814). § 198. Pepin 
the Little and Bonifacius. § 199. Saxons and Longobards. § 200. War with the 
Saxons, and defeat at Roncesvalles. § 201. Charlemagne, Roman emperor. § 202. 
His internal government. 2. Dissolution of the Frank empire, p. 134, 135. 
§ 203. Louis the Debonnaire ; Treaty of Verdun. § 204. Charles the Fat and 
Arnulf. § 205. Charles the Simple and Hugh Capet. 

II. NORMANS AND DANES, p. 135. 

§ 206. Scandinavia ; Iceland ; Russia. § 21)7- England ; Alfred ; Canute ; William 
the Concp-ieror. § 208. Lower Italy ; Robert Guiscard. 

III. THE SUPREMACY OF THE GERMANO-ROMAN EMPIRE, p. 137- 

1. The House of Saxony (919—1024.) § 209. Henry the Fowler. § 210. Otto 
the Great. § 211. Otto II. and III. § 212. Henry II.; German cultivation under 
the Ottos. 2. The House of Franconia, p. 139—142. § 213. Conrad II. and 



CONTENTS. XI 

Henry III. § 214. Henry IV. and the Saxons. § 215. Henry IV. and pope 
Gregory VII. § 216. Henry IV.'s death. § 217. Henry V. and Lothaire of 
Saxony. 

IV. THE ASCENDANCY OF THE CHURCH IN THE TIME OF THE 
CRUSADES, p. 122. 

1. The Crusades. § 218. The assembly of the Church at Clermont. § 219. 
Peter of Amiens and Walter the Penniless. § 220. The first crusade under Godfrey 
of Bouillon. § 221. Conquest of Jerusalem. § 222. The second crusade. § 223. 
The third crusade. § 224. The fourth crusade ; the Latin empire in Constantinople. 
§ 225. The fifth crusade ; the emperor Frederick II. § 226. The sixth crusade, 
under Louis IX. § 227- The consequences of the crusades ; orders of knights. 
§ 228. War against the Albigenses. 2. The Hohenstaufens (a.d. 1138 — 1154), 
p. 151 — 158. § 229. Welfs and Waiblings. § 230. Frederick Barbarossa in Italy; 
Arnold of Brescia. § 231. Milan destroyed ; Alexandria founded. §232. Battle of 
Legnano ; peace of Constance. § 233. Frederick Barbarossa and Henry the Lion. 
§ 234. Henry VI. and Philip of Swabia. § 235. Pope Innocent III. and the 
emperor Otto IV. § 236. Frederick II. 's contest with the papacy. § 237. Rival 
emperor in Germany. § 238. Frederick II. 's death. § 239. Death of Manfred at 
Beneventum. § 240. Conradine's death ; the Sicilian vespers. 3. General view of 
the Middle Ages, p. 158. § 241. The feudal system. § 242. Chivalry. § 243. 
Hierarchy. § 244. Monachism. § 245. Mendicant orders ; Franciscans and 
Dominicans. § 246. State of the towns. § 247. Literature (1), Scholastics and 
Mystics. § 248. (2) Science and the writing of history. § 249. (3) Poetry. 

V. DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH, p. 166. 

1. The Interregnum (a.d. 1250 — 1273). § 250. Club law; confederations of 
towns. 2. Origin of the House of Hapsburg and the Helvetic confederation, p. 166 
— 169. § 251. Rudolf of Hapsburg. §252. Rudolf's proceedings in the empire. 
§ 253. Adolf of Nassau and Albert of Austria. § 254. The confederation of the 
Rutli ; William Tell ; Morgarten. 3. Philip the Fair of France and the emperor 
Louis the Bavarian, p. 169 — 172. § 255. Philip IV. and pope Bonifacius VIII. ; 
the popes at Avignon. § 256. Dissolution of the order of the Temple. 
§ 257. Henry of Luxemburg. § 258. Louis the Bavarian and Frederick the Fair. 
§ 259. Diet at Rense ; Louis' death. 4. The emperors of the House of Luxemburg, 
p. 172 — 174. § 260. Charles IV. § 261. Wenceslaus ; the German town war. 
§ 262. Rupert of the Palatinate and Sigismund. 5. The division in the Church and 
the great councils, p. 174. § 263. The division in the Church; WiclifF and Huss. 
§ 264. The council of Constance. § 265. The Hussite war. § 266. The council of 
Basle. 6. Germany under Frederick III. and Maximilian I., p. 178. § 267. 
Albert II. and Frederick III. § 268. Maximilian I. ; change in the German consti- 
tution. § 269. End of the middle age. 

VI. HISTORY OF THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES 
DURING THE MIDDLE AGE, p. 179. 

1. France. § 270. a. France under the House of Capet (a.d. 987 — 1328). 
h. France under the House of Valois (a.d. 1328—1529), p. 180. § 271. Philip VI. 
and John the Good ; Crecy and Poictiers. § 272. Charles V. and VI. ; civil war. 
§ 273. Battle of Agincourt. § 274. Maid of Orleans ; Louis XI. 2. England, 
p. 183—186. § 275. Henry Plantagenet and Thomas a. Becket. § 276. Richard 
Lion-heart and John Lackland. § 277- Edward I. and the war of liberty in Scotland. 
§ 278- Edward III. ; the House of Lancaster. § 279. The wars of the red and white 



Xll CONTENTS. 

rose. 3. Spain, p. 186— 189. § 289. State of Spain in the middle age. §231. 
Aragon and Castile. § 282. Ferdinand and Isabella; the Inquisition. § 283. 
Expulsion of the Moors. § 4. Italy, p. 189—194. a. Upper Italy. § 284. 
Venice. § 285. Genoa. § 280. Milan. § 287- Savoy and Piedmont. h. Middle 
and Lower Italy, p. 191. § 288. Florence; Cosmo de Medici. § 289. Lorenzo the 
Magnificent; Savanarola ; fine arts. § 290. State of the Church ; Ferrara. §291. 
Naples and Sicily. 5. The new Burgundian territory, p. 194. § 292. Condition of 
the kingdom under the first dukes. § 293. Charles the Bold. § 294. The new 
Burgundian territory after the death of Charles. 6. Scandinavia, p. 195. § 295. 
Establishment of Christianity in the three Scandinavian kingdoms. § 296. Denmark 
before the union of Calmar. § 297- Sweden before and after the union of Calmar. 
7. Hungary, p. 198. § 298. Stephen the Pious; the Saxons in Transylvania ; the 
" Golden Privilege." § 299. Louis the Great and Matthias Corvinus. 8. Poland, 
p. 199. § 300. State of Poland; Casimir the Great. § 301. The Jagellons ; 
formation of the power of the nobles. 9. The Russian empire, p. 201. § 302. 
The imperial House of Ruric; Ivan ; Vasilyevitsch. 10. Moguls and Turks, p. 202 
— 205. § 303. Zengis-Khan and his sons. § 304. The Osman Turks in Asia 
Minor. § 305. Bajazet and Timur. § 30G. Murad II. ; the Christian army defeated 
at Warna. § 307. Taking of Constantinople ; greatness and decay of the Osman 
empire. 



THIRD BOOK. 

THE MODERN EPOCH. 

I. THE FORERUNNERS OF THE MODERN EPOCH, p. 206. 

1. The sea passage to the East Indies, and the discovery of America, p. 206". 
§ 308. Invention of the compass ; gunpowder ; printing. § 309. The Portuguese in 
the East Indies. § 310. Christopher Columbus. § 311. Balboa; Cortez ; Pizarro. 
§ 312. Consequences of the discovery of America. 2. The revival of the arts and 
sciences, p. 210. § 313. Italy ; Germany (Reuchlin, Erasmus, Hutten) ; Humanists 
and Obscurantists. 

II. THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION, p. 212. 

1. The German Reformation, p. 212—221. a. Dr. Martin Luther. § 314. The 
sale of indulgences and the ninety-five theses. § 315. Luther. § 316. Cajetan ; 
Frederick the Wise ; Miltitz. § 317- His disputation at Leipsic ; burning of the 
pope's bull. § 318. Diet of Worms. § 319. Dr. Carlstadt and the Anabaptists ; 
Philip Melancthon. § 320. Extension of the Reformation. b. The peasant war, 
p. 210". § 321. Thomas Munzer. § 322. Subjection of the peasants. c. The 
Augsburg confession, p. 218. § 323. Activity of Luther and Melancthon ; Diet 
of Spire. § 324. Diet of Augsburg. d. Ulric Zwingle, p. 220. § 325. 
Reformation in Switzerland. § 32G. Religious war; battle of Kappel. 2. Wars 
of the House of Hapsburg against France, p. 221. § 327. Charles V. and 
Francis I. ; wars respecting Milan. § 328. Battle of Pavia ; taking of Rome ; 
Ladies' Peace of Cambray. § 32;). Campaign against Tunis ; second and third war 
between Charles and Francis. 3. The war of religion in Germany, p. 225. § 330. 
The league of Smalcald ; the gospel in Wirtcmbcrg. § 331. The Anabaptists in 
Munster. § 332. Extension of the Reformation in Saxony, Brandenburg, the 
Palatinate, &c. § 333. The war of Smalcald; campaign on the Danube. §334. 
Charles V.'s triumphant expedition into Southern Germany. § 335. Battle near 



CONTENTS- Xlll 

Miihlberg; the elector of Saxony and the landgraf of Hesse taken prisoners. 
§ 336. The Augsburg interim. § 337. Maurice of Saxony ; the treaty of Passau. 
§ 338. The religious war of Augsburg. § 339. Charles V. dies. 4. Progress of the 
Reformation through Europe, p. 234. a. Lutheranism and Calvinism. § 340. 
Germany; the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. §341. Switzerland; Calvinism. 
§ 342. Calvinism in France, in the Netherlands, in Scotland. b. Establishment of 
the Anglican Church, p. 237. § 343. England ; Henry VIII. 's ecclesiastical innova- 
tions. § 344. Henry VIII. and his wives. § 345. Establishment of the Episcopal 
Church under Edward VI. § 346. The English Church under Maria and Elizabeth. 
c. The Reformation in the three Scandinavian kingdoms, p. 240. § 347- Scandi- 
navia ; Sweden under Gustavus Vasa. § 348. The Reformation in Denmark. 
§ 349. Sweden under the sons of Gustavus Vasa. § 350. Poland. d. The Catholic 
Church, p. 243. § 351. Inquisition ; papacy; Council of Trent. § 352. Order of 
Jesuits: 5. The times of Philip II. (a.d. 1556—1598) and Elizabeth (a.d. 1558— 
1603), p. 245. § 353. Philip II. : character and mode of government. a. Portugal 
united with Spain, p. 246. § 354. King Sebastian. b. Struggle for liberty in the 
Netherlands, p. 247. § 355. Philip's attacks on the privileges of the Netherlanders. 
§ 356. Compromise ; the Gueses ; sacrilege. § 357. Alba in the Netherlands. 
§ 358. Don Juan ; Alexander Farnese ; William of Orange. § 359. The Armada ; 
termination of the war. § 360. Trade ; government synod of Dort. c. France 
during the war of religion, p. 251. § 361. Position of parties. § 362. The first 
three wars of religion. § 363. The Bartholomew night. § 364. Henry III. and 
the holy league. § 365. Henry IV. d. Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, p. 256. 
§ 366. Difference in the characters of the two queens ; Knox. § 367- Mary Stuart 
in Scotland. § 368. Mary Stuart in England. § 369. Rise of England, and death 
of Elizabeth ; Essex. e. Culture and literature in the century of the Reformation. 
§ 370. 1. Germany ; 2. Italy ; 3. Spain and Portugal ; 4. England, p. 259. 

III. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, p. 261. 

1. The thirty years' war (a.d. 1618 — 1648). a. Bohemia; Palatinate; Lower 
Germany; Tilly; appearance of Wallenstein. §371- Union and league. §372. 
The letters patent, and the proceedings in Prague. § 373. Frederick V., and the 
battle of the White Hill. § 374. Tilly in the Palatinate. § 375. Wallenstein in the 
north of Germany. § 376. Edict of restitution ; Diet of Regensburg ; Wallenstein's 
deposition. b. Interference of Sweden ; Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein, p. 26'7. 
§ 377- Gustavus Adolphus in Pomerania ; destruction of Magdeburg. § 378. Battle 
of Breitenfield and Leipsic ; triumphant course of Gustavus Adolphus. § 379. 
Nuremberg ; Lutzen. § 380. Alliance of Heilbron ; Wallenstein's death. c. Ter- 
mination of the war; peace of Westphalia, p. 270. § 381. Bernhard of Weimar; 
Baner. § 382. Torstenson ; Wrangel ; termination of the war. § 383. Peace of 
Westphalia. d. Sweden under Christina and Charles X. ; change in the constitution 
of Denmark, p. 272. § 384. Sweden under Christina. § 385. Charles X., and the 
change in the constitution of Denmark. 2. The revolution in England, and the ex- 
pulsion of the Stuarts, p. 2?3. a. The first two Stuarts (James I. 1603 — 1625, 
Charles I. 1625 — 1649). § 386. James's character and principles. § 387. The 
gunpowder-plot ; nuptial expedition of the prince of Wales ; position in relation to 
parliament. § 388. Petition of right ; Strafford ; Laud. § 389. Hampden and the 
Scottish covenant. § 390. The long parliament; Strafford's fall. § 391. Civil 
war ; Cromwell's appearance. § 392. Victory of the Independents ; Charles with 
the Scots. § 393. Death of Charles. b. Oliver Cromwell, p. 280. § 394. Crom- 
well's victories at Dunbar and Worcester. § 395. Cromwell as Lord Protector, 
the parliament. § 396. Restoration. c. The last two Stuarts (Charles II. 1660 — 
1685, and James II. 1685—1688), p. 283. § 397. Government of Charles II.; Test 



XIV CONTENTS. 

Act ; Habeas Corpus Act ; Whigs and Tories. § 398. Government and fall of 
James II. § 399. William and Mary; Bill of Rights; union with Scotland. 
3. The age of Louis XIV., p. 286. a. Richelieu and Mazarin. § 400. Louis XIII. ; 
government and activity of Richelieu. § 401. Anne of Austria and Mazarin ; war of 
the Fronde. b. Government and conquests of Louis XIV., p. 289. § 402. Louis 
XIV. and his ministers and generals. § 403. The Spanish and Dutch war ; peace of 
Aix. § 404. Sasbach ; Fehrbellin ; peace of Nimeguen. § 405. Reunions ; Stras- 
burg wrested from the empire. c. Austria's distress and triumph, p. 292. § 406. 
The Turks before Vienna ; peace of Carlowitz. d. The war of Orleans, p. 293. 
§ 407. Desolation of the Palatinate ; peace of Ryswick. e. Life at the court ; litera- 
ture ; Church, p. 294. § 408. Industry ; court of Versailles ; art and literature. 
§ 409. Jansenists ; persecution of the Huguenots. 

IV. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, p. 297- 

1. The Spanish war of succession (1702—1714). § 410. Origin of war; position 
of parties. §411. Hochstadt ; Prince Eugene and Marlborough. §412. Ramil- 
lies; Turin; Spain. §413. Humiliation of France ; Malplaquet. §414. Change 
in affairs; peace of Utrecht. § 415. France; Orleans; duke-regent. § 416. Spain; 
Philip V. ; Ferdinand VI. § 417. England under the House of Hanover; attempts 
of the Stuarts frustrated. 2. Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia 
in the Northern war (1700— 1718). § 418. Sweden and Russia under the House of 
Romanoff. §419. Peter's reforms. §420. Poland under Frederick Augustus the 
Strong. § 421. Charles XII. in Denmark and Poland; Stanislaus Lescinski. 
§ 422. Charles XII. in Saxony ; his character. § 423. Peter on the Baltic ; battle 
of Pultowa. § 424. Charles XII. in Turkey. § 425. Death of Charles XII. 
§ 426. Reformation in Russia. § 427- Alexei ; Menzikoff ; Elizabeth. § 428. The 
Polish war of succession. 3. The rise of Prussia, p. 309. § 429. Frederick I. 
§ 430. Frederick William I. § 431. Youth of Frederick II. 4. The times of 
Frederick II. and Maria Theresa, p. 312. a. The Austrian war of succession (a.d. 
1740 — 1748). § 432. Cause of the war; Pragmatic sanction; Charles Albert. 
§ 433. The first Silesian war ; Charles' coronation. § 434. The Hungarians ; diffi- 
culties of Bavaria. § 435. Prague ; Dettingen. § 436. The second Silesian war. 
§ 437. Close of the war ; peace of Aix. b. The seven years' war (a. d. 1756 — 1763), 
p. 315. § 438. Austria's alliance with Russia, France, and Saxony. § 439. Dres- 
den and Pirna. §440. Prague; Collin; Rosbach ; Leuthen. §441. Zorndorf; 
Hochkirch. § 442. Kunersdorf; Bergen; Minden. § 443. Leignitz ; Torgau. 
§ 444. Peter III. and Catharine II. of Russia. § 445. Close of war ; peace of 
Hubertsburg. c. The German empire and the age of Frederick, p. 320. § 446. 
Condition of the German empire. § 447. Frederick's internal government. § 448. 
The Bavarian war of succession and the alliance of princes. d. The intellectual 
popular life in Germany, p. 323. § 449. Poetry. § 450. Religion; historical 
writing ; philosophy ; education. 



FOURTH BOOK. 

THE LATEST PEEIOD. 
A. THE FORERUNNERS OF THE REVOLUTION, p. 326. 

1. The literature of illumination. § 451. Character of French literature. § 452. 
Voltaire ; Montesquieu ; Rousseau. § 453. Effects of the literature of illumination ; 



CONTENTS. XV 

dissolution of the Jesuits' society of illuminati. 2. The American war of independ- 
ence, p. 329. § 454. Origin of the war ; position of parties in England. § 455. The 
war to the capitulation of Saratoga ; Washington ; Franklin ; Lafayette. § 456. Sym- 
pathy of France ; armed neutrality. § 457- Extension of the war ; siege of Gibraltar. 
§ 458. Peace of Versailles ; Holland ; United States of America. 3. Innovations of 
princes and ministers, p. 333. § 459. Character of political and ecclesiastical reforms. 
§ 460. Portugal under Pombal ; Spain under Charles III. and Aranda ; France ; 
Choiseul; Turgot and Malasherbes. § 461. Struensee in Denmark. § 462. Gus- 
tavus III. of Sweden. § 463. Reforms of Joseph II. in Austria. § 464. Internal 
government of Catharine II. in Russia. 4. The partition of Poland, p. 339. 
§ 465. State of Poland ; king Stanislaus Poniatowski. § 466. The contest with the 
Dissidents ; Confederation of Radom and Bar. § 467. First Turkish war ; first parti- 
tion of Poland. § 468. Tauris ; second Turkish war ; Poland's new constitution. 
§ 469. Confederation of Targowicz ; second partition of Poland. § 470. Poland's 
end. 

B. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, p. 345. 

1 . The last days of absolute monarchy, p. 345—376. § 471. Louis XV. and the em- 
pire of the passions. § 472. Taxation; parliament. § 473. Louis XVI. and his court ; 
increasing financial difficulties ; Necker ; Calonne. § 474. Contest with the parlia- 
ment ; summoning of the estates-general. 2. The period of the national assembly, 
p. 348. § 475. The third estate declares itself a national assembly. § 476. Storm 
of the Bastile. § 477- The new system. § 478. The king and the national as- 
sembly at Paris. § 479. Ceremony of the federation ; death of Mirabeau ; flight of 
the king. 3. The legislative assembly and the fall of the monarchy, p. 353. 
§ 480. Position of parties ; Girondist minister. § 481. The tenth of August. 
§ 482. The days of September. 4. Republican France under the government of the 
National Convention, p. 356. § 483. Execution of the king. § 484. The war ; 
Dumourier. § 485. Fall of the Girondists. § 486. Rule of the Jacobins. 
§ 487- I- Persecutions of the aristocrats. § 488. 2. Horrors in the south. § 489. 
Bloody scenes in La Vendee. § 490. Fall of the Dantonists. § 491. 3. Wars of 
the republic ; first coalition. § 492. Peace of Basle. § 493. Robespierre's fall. 
§ 494. The last days of the convention. 5. France under the Directory, p. 368. 
§ 495. Napoleon in Italy. § 496. Internal state of France; Babeuf ; royalists. 
§ 497. The republicans in Italy; revolution in Switzerland. § 498. War of the 
second coalition. § 499. Napoleon in Egypt and Syria. § 500. The eighteenth 
Brumaire. 

C. GOVERNMENT OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, p. 377. 

I. The consulate (1800— 1804). § 501. The consular constitution. § 502. Ma- 
rengo and Hohenlinden. § 503. Egypt ; the peace of Amiens ; murder of the emperor 
Paul. § 504. The new court and the concordat. § 505. Conspiracies. II. Napoleon 
emperor (1804—1814), p. 382. 1. § 506. The empire. 2. Austerlitz ; Presburg ; 
Confederation of the Rhine, p. 383. § 507- Hanover ; Italy; Prussia. § 508. Ulm; 
Trafalgar. § 509. Austerlitz; peace of Presburg. § 510. Establishment of the 
Rhenish Confederation. 3. Jena; Tilsit; Erfurt, p. 388. § 511. Occasions of the 
Prussian war. § 512. Battle of Jena, and its immediate consequences. § 513. Preuss ; 
Eylau; Friedland; peace of Tilsit. §514. Proceedings in Sweden and Denmark; 
Napoleon and Alexander in Erfurt. 4. The events in the Pyrenean peninsula, p. 392. 
§ 515. Junot in Lisbon ; intrigues in Bayonne ; Joseph Buonaparte king of Spain. 
§ 516. Insurgent war in Spain; Dupont's capitulation. § 517. Guerilla war; 
La Romana; constitution of the year '12. § 518. End of the Peninsular war. 
§ 519. Imprisonment of the pope. 5. The second Austrian war; Hofer; Schill 



Xvi CONTENTS. 

(1809), p. 390. § 520. Aspern and Wagram. § 521. Popular war in the Tyrol ; 
the peace of Vienna. § 522. Schill ; William of Brunswick ; Stein ; Scharnhorst. 
§ 523. The French empire at its height. 6. The war against Russia (1812), p. 400. 
§ 524. Origin of the wars. § 525. Napoleon in Poland. § 520. March to Moscow. 
§ 527. Retreat of the grand army. 

D. DISSOLUTION OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE, AND ESTABLISHMENT 
OF A FRESH SYSTEM, p. 403. 

1. The German war of liberation, and the fall of Napoleon, p. 403. § 528. Rise 
of Germany. § 529. German war of liberty from the year 1813. § 530. Battle of 
Lcipsic, and its results. § 531. Napoleon's last struggle. 2. Napoleon's death, and 
the restoration, p. 407. § 532. Napoleon's abdication; the first peace of Paris. 
§ 533. Congress of Vienna, and the first period of the restoration. § 534. Napoleon's 
return, and the government of the hundred days. § 535. Triumph of legitimacy, 
and Murat'a death. § 530. Waterloo. § 537- St. Helena. § 538. Second peace 
of Paris ; second restoration. 

E. THE PEOPLE AND STATES OF EUROPE FROM THE HOLY 
ALLIANCE TO THE PRESENT TIME, p. 412. 

1. The Holy Alliance and the position of parties, p. 412. § 539. The Holy Al- 
liance. § 540. Liberals and conservatives. 2. France, p. 413. § 541. Louis 
XVIII. § 542. Reign of Charles X. 3. The constitutional struggles in the 
Pyrenean peninsula and in Italy, p. 415. § 543. Ferdinand VII. and the camarilla. 
§ 544. Victory of the constitutionalists. § 545. Intervention of the Holy Alliance in 
Italy. §540. Destruction of the Cortes' government in Spain. § 547- Constitutional 
struggles in Portugal. 4. Great Britain, p. 418. § 548. State of England; 
increasing poverty. § 549. Court and government. § 550. Ireland. 5. Germany, 
p. 421. § 551. Struggle of opinions and position of parties. § 552. Feast of the 
Wartburg; Sand; decrees of Carlsbad. 0. Greece's struggle for liberty, p. 424. 
§ 553. Ypsilanti and the sacred band. § 554. Greece's struggle till the fall of 
Missolonghi, the Philhellenists. § 555. Navarino ; Adrianople ; conclusion. 7- The 
new romantic literature, p. 427. 8. The July revolution of Paris and its conse- 
quences, p. 428. § 557. The July revolution. § 558. General consequences. 
§ 559. The revolution in Belgium. § 500. Rise and fall of Poland. § 501. Liberal 
movements in Germany. § 502. Insurrections in Italy; struggles between throne 
and constitution in Spain. 9. Overthrow of the throne of July, and the latest revo- 
lutionary tempests, p. 435. a. The years of political and social agitation. § 503. In- 
ternal state of France. §504. Italy; Germany; Switzerland, b. The Paris revolution 
of February and its consequences, p. 440. § 504. The revolution of February and the 
French republic. § 506. The March days in Vienna and Berlin, and commotions in 
Germany. § 507. Preliminary parliament ; committee of fifty ; national assembly. 
§ 568. Italy's rise and fall. § 509. The truce of Malmo, and the Frankfurt September 
horrors. § 570. The Vienna October days. §571. Programme of Gagern ; dissolu- 
tion of the Berlin National Assembly. § 572. Kremsier ; Hungary's rise and fall. 
§ 573. The imperial constitution, and deputation to the emperor. § 574. Revolu- 
tionary movements in Saxony, Palatinate, and Baden, and the rump parliament. 
§ 575. Schleswic-Holstcin ; conclusion. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, p. 454. 



BOOK FIRST. 



HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. 



INTRODUCTION. 

I. THE FIRST RACE OE MEN". 

§ 1. Aeter God in the beginning had created the heavens and the 
earth, had adorned the heavens with the sun, moon, and stars, had 
clothed the earth with plants, and anhnated it with living animals ; 
he made man in his own image, the crown of creation, and designed 
him by the gifts of speech and reason for the ruler of the world. 
The first pair came forth pure and spotless from the hands of their 
Creator, and lived in child-like innocence in their native dwelling- 
place Paradise, until seduced by the tempter the serpent, they ate 
of the forbidden tree of knowledge, and by this violation of the 
commands of Grod lost their unconscious innocence and the posses- 
sion of their dwelling-place. 

After this, they and their posterity were obliged to spend their 
lives in labour and trouble, and to eat their bread in the sweat of their 
face. Evil passions and desires were awakened, and disturbed the 
peace of society ; the violent impulses of a savage and unrestrained 
nature plunged the later generations deeper and deeper into the 
disorders of vice and crime, till at length a great flood called the 
deluge, destroyed the whole race with the exception of JSToah and his 
descendants from the face of the earth. Noah's posterity, however, 
increased again so rapidly, that the later generations descended from 
his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were compelled to spread 
themselves abroad over the neighbouring countries, on account of 
their home being no longer large enough to contain them. It then 
entered into their minds to erect the Tower of Babel, " whose top 
was to reach unto heaven 1 ,'' and to be a perpetual memorial to them. 
God frustrated this presumptuous attempt by confusing their lan- 
guage, and by this diversity of speech brought about their separation. 

1 Gen. xi. 4. 



o THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

They dispersed themselves to all the four quarters of the earth, and 
colonized the three oldest divisions of the globe, Asia, Africa, and 
Europe, forming themselves Lato different peoples and nations, 
according to the varieties of then* language. 

11. THE M \\M SB or LIVING AMONG THE EARLIEST RACES. 

§ 2. Men chose different occupations and manners of living-, 
according to the diversities in their places of residence. The inhahit- 
anis of steppes and deserts, interspersed only here and there with 
fruitful pasture grounds, chose the life of shepherds, and roved as 
wandering tribes from place to place with then* tents and herds. 
They are called aomads, and their principal occupation is the breeding 
of cattle. Those who settled upon favourably situated parts of the 
sea-coast, soon discovered, with increasing popidation and develop- 
ment, the advantages of their position. They practised navigation 
and commerce, and sought after wealth and comfort, and in further- 
ance of these objects, were incited to lay out towns and erect elegant 
dwelling-houses ; whilst the inhabitants of inhospitable shores sup- 
ported a joyless existence by means of fisheries. Those who lived in 
plains devoted themselves to agriculture and the arts of peace, whilst 
the rude and hardy mountaineer gave himself up to the chase, and 
urged on by a violent impulse for freedom, sought his delight in wars 
and battles. 

By the taming of wild cattle, man procured for himself at an 
early period those indispensable assistants of labour, domesticated 
animals. 

A mighty instrument in the civilization of the human race, was 
commerce and the intercourse among different nations that sprang 
out of it. Those who lived in fruitful plains, or on the banks of 
suitable rivers, carried on an inland trade; the dwellers on the 
shores, on the contrary, a coasting trade. At first men exchanged 
one article for another (barter), and it was not till a later period that 
it occurred to them to fix a certain value upon the precious metals, 
and to employ coined money as an artificial and more convenient 
means of exchange. The inhabitants of towns addicted themselves 
to trade and inventions, and cultivated arts and sciences for the 
enriching and embellishment of life and the development of the 
human understanding. 

III. EORMS OE GOVERNMENT. DISTINCTION OF CASTES. 

§ 3. AVith the process of time nations divided themselves into the 
civilized and uncivilized, according as the development of their 
intellectual powers was furthered by talents and commerce, or 
cramped by dulness and isolation. Uncivilized nations are either 
wild hordes under the command of a chief who possesses uncon- 



INTRODUCTION. $ 

trolled power over life and death, or wandering nomadic tribes, 
guided by a leader, who as father of the family, exercises the func- 
tions of prince, judge, and high priest. Neither these nomadic races 
with their patriarchal government, nor the wild hordes that dwell in 
the unknown deserts of Africa (Negroes), in the steppes and lofty 
mountain ranges of Asia, or in the primaeval forests of America, find 
any place in history. This concerns itself only with those civilized 
nations who, from similar manners and for mutual convenience, have 
united themselves in peaceful intercourse and fellowship. 

States are divided into republican and monarchical, according to 
the form of their government or constitution. A state is called a 
monarchy when a single person stands at the head and manages its 
affairs. This single person is called Emperor, or King, Duke, or 
Prince, according to the extent of his dominions. The term, Free 
State or Republic, is given to that form of government in which the 
supreme power is placed in the hands of an elective body composed 
of numerous members. The republican form of government is some- 
times aristocratic, that is, when only a few families distinguished by 
birth or wealth, govern the community ; sometimes democratic, when 
the whole body of the people make the laws and select the responsible 
officers of government. 

The most ancient states were simple and uniform, and possessed 
for the most part that great hindrance to freedom, the system of 
castes. By this is to be understood, a strict separation of men 
according to their states and callings, which descended in unalterable 
succession from father to son ; by which means all interchange of 
conditions, or passing from one state to another, was rendered imprac- 
ticable. The priests, who alone possessed a knowledge of the religious 
customs and institutions, and who bequeathed their knowledge to 
their descendants, constituted the first caste. The second caste 
comprehended the soldiers, who were afterwards successful in raising 
themselves to an equality with the priestly condition. These two 
castes divided the government between them. The third caste were 
the cultivators of the soil. The fourth the artisans. If shepherds 
constituted a distinct caste, they were the lowest and most despised. 
The institution of castes was preserved for the longest time and in 
the greatest purity in India and Egypt. 

IV. THE RELIGION OE THE HEATHEN WOULD. 

§ 4. As men dispersed themselves over the earth, the original 
belief in the one true God (Monotheism) was lost, and people fell 
into the worship of many deities (Polytheism), adoring the visible 
works of creation, more particularly the sun and the stars of heaven, 
instead of their Creator, or else reverencing the operative powers of 
nature as divine beings. The faith in a single divinity was preserved 

b2 



4 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

among the Jewish people alone, in the -worship of their hereditary 
God, Jehovah. The religions of all other nations diversified as they 
may be, are included under the term Paganism. Instead of regarding 
the Supreme Being, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, as a 
Spirit, and worshipping him in spirit and in truth, the ancient nations 
gave him the figure of a man, deified his different powers and attri- 
butes, and then represented them under the greatest variety of forms. 
Idols were fashioned from stone and metal, wood and clay ; temples 
and altars were erected, and sacrifices offered to them ; partly to 
appease their wrath, and partly to obtain their favour. The 
sacrifices varied in character with the civilization of the people 
who offered them. The Greeks and Eomans instituted joyous 
festivals to their gods, in which the fruits that were presented, 
and the animals that were slain, from the modest gift of a 
firstling of the flock to the solemn sacrifice of a hundred oxen, 
(hecatomb) were socially consximed ; whilst savage tribes slaugh- 
tered human beings upon their altars, for the purpose of appeas- 
ing by blood the wrath of hostile powers, for such they con- 
sidered their divinities to be. The Phoenician and Syrian tribes 
actually placed their own children in the arms of a red-hot idol, 
Moloch. If at first the image of the idol was only a visible symbol 
of a spiritual conception, or of an invisible power, this higher meaning 
was lost in the progress of time in the minds of most nations, and 
they came at length to pay worship to the lifeless image itself. The 
priests alone were acquainted with any deeper meaning, but refused 
to share it with the people ; they reserved it under the veil of esoteric 
doctrines, as the peculiar appanage of their own class. "With the same 
object they invented legends, stories, and fables, about the gods 
whom they worshipped, clothed these in poetical forms, and thus 
gave origin to mythology, or the science of the gods. In these 
stories, the actions and histories of the different deities, and the 
relations of men in regard to them, are described, not in clear and 
intelligible language, but veiled in enigmatical allusions, allegorical 
histories, and figurative forms of expression. The greater the amount 
of creative imagination and religious impulse possessed by a nation, 
the richer is its mythology. If these legends of the gods served to 
excite the people to superstition, the solemn worship in the sacred 
spaces of the temple -with its mysterious ceremonies and symbolical 
usages, was no less calculated to maintain in them a feeling of vene- 
ration and religious awe, and for the purpose of establishing a belief 
in 1 he presence of God and his interference in human affairs more 
firmly, sacred places and temples of note were provided with oracles, 
from which the credulous multitude might gain information of the 
future, i ix obscure, and oftentimes, ambiguous language. In this way 
the mind of man was led away from Divine Truth, and ensnared in 



INTRODUCTION. 



lifeless ceremonies ; the simple relation and inward tendency of the 
creature to the Creator was disturbed and torn asunder, the priest- 
hood ruled the people by the might of superstition, and acquired 
wealth, honour, and power for themselves. 



A. THE EASTEEN EACES. 

I. TIIE ASIATICS. 

§ 5. Asia, called from its situation, the Eastern land, was the 
cradle of the human race. The situation of Paradise must be sought for 
in the attractive neighbourhood of the Himalaya mountains, the tops 
of which lose themselves in the clouds. In the East arose those vast 
nations and cities from whence other lands have derived a part of 
their civil institutions, their religion, and their culture, and which 
have consequently received the name of cities of civilization. In the 
East, the land of the camel "the ship of the desert," first originated 
the splendid inland traffic called the caravan trade, which exercised 
so important an influence on the progress of human culture. Eor 
the purpose of more easily undergoing the difficulties and perils of 
lengthened journeys through regions but little known, and thickly 
inhabited by predatory tribes, the Eastern merchants assembled them- 
selves in companies, and escorted their wares packed upon camels 
from one place to another, in large, and frequently armed bands. 
These commercial journeys were the occasion for building towns and 
places for traffic, and for the erection of storehouses and caravan- 
saries. They brought about a mutual intercourse between the 
inhabitants of distant places, and were the means of communicating, 
not only the productions, but also the religious institutions, and the 
social policy of one land to another. Temples and oracles of 
celebrity frequently served for markets and warehouses. It was in 
the East that all the varieties of religion took their origin, and gained 
then perfect development ; not only the belief in one God, which 
prevailed among the Jews, and which afterwards re-appeared with 
renewed strength and purity in Christianity, but the pagan worship 
of idols in all its multiplied varieties, with its priestly power, its 
sacrifices, and its ceremonial worship. Eor upon every thing that 
concerns the relation of the creature to its Maker, the people of the 
East have thought most deeply and zealously, and have attained to 
results to which no other nation has arrived. 

The forms of Eastern governments and constitutions were less 
numerous than the religions. Among the nomadic races, the heads 
of the tribes ruled with patriarchal authority ; in countries where the 
distinction of castes prevailed, the privileged classes were priests 
and soldiers : from both arose, in the course of time, the unlimited 
kingly power (despotism), which gave to the ruler the uncontrolled 



6 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

sovereignty of tlie nomadic chief, and the religions sanctity of the 
priestly king. In this manner the kingly authority gradually grew to 
such a height in the East, that the possessor shared a respect almost 
equal to that which was paid the Divinity. In relation to the ruler, 
all the officers of state were regarded as slaves and menials, without 
either personal rights or property. The king disposed at will of the 
lives and possessions of his subjects, he gave or took away at his 
pleasure, and no one dared to appear in his presence, except with his 
body prostrated on the ground. He lived like a god, in the midst of 
pleasure and enjoyment, surrounded by slaves, who complied with his 
wishes, executed his commands, and submitted themselves to his 
pleasures ; and encircled by all the riches and possessions, l>j all the 
pomp and magnificence of the earth. Such governments as these, in 
which law and human rights go for nothing, where despotism and 
slavery are alone to be met with, possess no vital energy, nor any 
capability of permanent civilization, and for this reason all oriental 
states have become the prey of foreign conquerors, and their early 
civilization has either been destroyed, or prevented from making 
farther advances. 

By disposition, the Orientals are more inclined to contemplative 
ease and enjoyment than to active exertion ; hence it has come to 
pass, that the Eastern nations have never attained to freedom or 
spontaneous activity, but have either silently submitted themselves to 
their native rulers, or groaned under the yoke of foreign oppressors. 

By dint of their intellectual capacity, they quickly attained to a 
certain grade of civilization, but afterwards gave themselves up to an 
unenterprising pursuit of pleasure, until they gradually sunk into 
sloth and effeminacy. This effeminacy was further promoted by the 
practice of polygamy, a custom peculiar to the East, which is subver- 
sive of the family affections and of the domestic purity and morality 
which are their attendants. 

As regards the art of the Orientals, the gigantic designs of their 
buildings, and their incredible patience and perseverance in executing 
and completing them, are most worthy of admiration ; but their 
architecture never displays the symmetry, the harmonious beauty, or 
the adaptation of means to ends, which characterize the architecture 
of a free people. The productions of their arts and industry afford 
evidence rather of manual dexterity, attained by long practice, and 
rendered inalienable by the tyranny of castes and guilds, than of 
inventive genius or active handicraft. Slavery hung like a leaden 
weight on every outward manifestation of life in the East. 

II. THE CHINESE. 

§ 6. As the progress of the human race has in general followed the 
course of the sun, it will be most advisable to commence its history 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

with the tribes of the extreme East. In the vast empire of China 
has lived, since the earliest period, a race of Mongolian origin, which 
has preserved unchanged for ages the same culture and the same 
institutions. Every thing is there regulated by hereditary laws and 
customs, and freedom is entirely banished. This want of progressive 
development is occasioned partly by the tenacious character of the 
people, which induces them to cling fast to the customary and 
traditionary modes of living, partly by the empire being cut off by 
mountains, seas, and the lofty and extensive wall of China, from all 
intercourse with foreign nations, and from all strangers being strictly 
prohibited from entering the kingdom, and is partly produced by 
political institutions. The emperor, who is possessed of absolute 
power, and regarded with almost religious veneration, and the 
numerous and privileged aristocratic class, (mandarhis) alike compel 
the slavish and despised people to a strict observance of their tradi- 
tionary customs and usages, and deprive them of every thing new. 
As the Chinese are thus prevented from profiting by the experience 
of foreign nations, they remain inferior to other people in civilization, 
though they have been acquainted from the earliest ages with gun- 
powder, the art of printing, and the mariner's compass. Not- 
withstanding they have long been celebrated for their skill in the 
manufacture of silk, and in the preparation of porcelain, writing 
materials, carved work, and similar productions, their industry cannot 
be compared with the commercial activity and diligence in the arts of 
the cultivated states of the "West. The object of their education is 
not such a development of the intellectual powers as would lead to 
the cultivation of the whole of the human faculties, but rather the 
teaching of that which then predecessors have known and practised 
before them. This education, this mode of life, and form of govern- 
ment, render the Chinese weak and cowardly ; they entertain, 
nevertheless, the greatest opinion of their own excellence, and regard 
all other notions with lofty contempt. Their language is so clumsy 
and difficult, that it requires several years to learn even to read it. 
The Chinese pay great respect to Confucius (Hong-fu-tse) as the 
founder of their religion. 

III. THE INDIANS. 

§ 7. To the south of the snow-covered heights of the lofty Hima- 
laya, extends a fertile and prosperous region, blessed with a healthy 
and varying climate, and rich in productions of the most diversified 
character. In this land, watered by the Indus, the Granges, and 
other large rivers, lived, ages ago, a remarkable people called Hindoos 
or Indians, whose former greatness is still attested by numerous 
buildings, ruins of towns and temples, surprising memorials in 
inscriptions on stone, and innumerable historical recollections. 



8 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

The Indians are descended from the Aryans, who at one time 
undertook an expedition from their native highlands, and subjected 
the less powerful aborigines of India. They soon changed their 
native nomadic customs for the system of castes, which they adopted 
in its severest form. The most important caste were the priests ; a 
wealthy, honourable, and privileged class, who were called Brahmaus, 
or Brahmins. This caste was considered sacred and inviolable ; they 
could not be subjected to corporeal punishment for any crime, 
they were exempt from taxation, formed the chief council of 
the king, and filled ah! offices. Next to the Brahmins came the 
warriors, who in return for their pay and certain privileges, were 
responsible for the security and defence of the kingdom. As how- 
ever, the frequent necessity for waging war or encountering enemies 
was precluded by the remote situation of the country and the peace- 
ful character of its inhabitants, these soldiers soon became slothful 
and degenerate, and thus rendered it easy for the priests to retain 
their political ascendancy. The kings belonged to the caste of 
soldiers. The farmers and artisans were heavily oppressed with 
imposts, and held their land only in fee. The Pariahs, from whom 
the gipsies are said to be descended, are the dark-coloured descend- 
ants of the wild aborigines, and are regarded by the other Indians as 
the refuse of mankind, and treated with the deepest contempt. 
" They do not venture to dwell in the towns, cities, or villages, or 
even in their neighbourhood ; every thing they touch is looked upon 
as unclean, and it is j>ollution even to have seen them." Any inter- 
mixture of castes by means of marriage, was severely prohibited. 
Persons who were guilty of an infringement of this law, were cast 
out of society, and exposed to contempt. This rigorous division 
into castes, which the priests laid down as a divine ordinance, 
checked the progress of civilization, and was the occasion that it 
never passed beyond a certain point, and then lapsed into a state of 
repose and stagnation. 

EELIGIOK, LITEEATUEE, AET. 

§ 8. The Indians reverenced in Brahma a divine first principle, 
which appears under three forms, as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, 
and, besides him, a crowd of spirits and inferior divinities. The 
central point of their religion is the doctrine of the transmigration of 
the soul (metempsychosis). According to this doctrine, the human 
soul is only joined to earthly bodies for the purposes of punishment, 
and its aim and effort is to again unite itself with the divine spirit of 
the universe. The Indian therefore, regards existence in this world 
as a time of trial and punishment, which can only be abridged by a 
holy life, by prayer and sacrifice, by penance and purification. If 
man neglects this, and sinks himself still deeper into vice by depar- 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

ture from Gk>d, his soul after death will be joined to the body of a 
different and inferior animal, and will have to commence its wander- 
ings afresh. On the other hand, the souls of the wise, of heroes and 
penitents, enter upon their upward path through shining stars, and 
are finally united with the spiritual first principle from whence they 
proceeded. This doctrine was interpreted by the Brahmins to signify 
that man could only attain the end of his being by the uninterrupted 
contemplation of divine things, and by abstraction from earthly. 
They placed therefore, a higher value upon silent meditation and 
abstraction, than upon an active life, withdrew from the inferior 
castes, and believed that by acts of penance and self-inflicted tortures, 
by alms-giving and acts of outward holiness, and by the strict 
observance of innumerable laws, rules, and precepts, they brought 
themselves into closer union with the Deity. Since it followed from 
the doctrine of transmigration, that the souls of men might inhabit the 
bodies of animals, the Brahmins dared not kill or injure any thing en- 
dowed with life, nor eat any flesh unless it had been offered in sacrifice. 

The Indians possessed sensibility and creative imagination. This 
is particularly apparent in their copious literature. Many of their 
works and poems, the whole of which are composed in the sacred and 
now obsolete Sanscrit language, and are intimately related to their 
religion and theology, are already three thousand years old. The 
most important works are the four books of the Yedas, which are 
held in the most profound respect, as the sources of the Brahminical 
religion. They contain religious hymns and prayers, directions 
respecting sacrificial offerings, and moral precepts and proverbs. 
Next to the Vedas, the code of Menu is held in the greatest 
estimation. Besides these, the Indians possess a great multitude of 
poetical works of all descriptions, distinguished by highly figurative 
language, as well as deep sensibility and religious feeling. Many 
of these works were brought, to Europe by the English who 
conquered the country, and afterwards translated by learned men 
into German and other European languages. Indian art, as weU as 
its literature, is intimately connected with religion. More par- 
ticularly worthy of remark are the rock-hewn temples and grottos, of 
which the most celebrated are to be found at Ellora in the middle of 
Lower India, at Salsette near Bombay, and at the island of Ele- 
phanta in the bay of Bombay. In these places we meet with temples, 
grottos, dwelling-houses, and passages, covered with images and 
inscriptions hewn one above another in the rock, and extending for 
miles. These grottos coutain an incredible quantity of works 
artistically and elaborately executed, which must have required the 
labour of many thousand hands for numberless ages, and the greatest 
patience and perseverance for their completion. 

The abundance of the productions of nature and art, pearls, 



10 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

precious stones, ivory, spice, frankincense, and silks, made India from 
an early period the great centre and emporium of the maritime and 
caravan trade ; but it also proved a lure to foreign invaders. Dis- 
united and dismembered, as well by the system of castes as by their 
political institutions, and enervated and stupified by their want of 
freedom, the Indians fell an easy prey to their warlike enemies. 

IV. BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS. 

§ 9. The fertile regions watered by the Euphrates and Tigris, and the 
grassy uplands of Mesopotamia, were formerly inhabited by Semitic 
Nimrod tribes, including the Babylonians and Assyrians. Nhn- 

b.c. 2100. rod, " a mighty hunter before the Lord," is named as the 
founder of the Babylonian empire, and its chief city Babylon. This 
city was built in form of a square, and washed by the waters of 
the Euphrates, which flowed through it. A hundred years later, 
Ninus Ninus is said to have built the great city Nineveh, on the 

b.c. 2000. banks of the Tigris, and to have subjected the Baby- 
lonians to his ride. The wife and successor of Ninus, the legendary 
Semiramis, is described as an heroic and victorious 
woman, who carried her conquests as far as India, embel- 
lished Babylon with magnificent works, (the hanging gardens raised 
upon terraces,) and provided her land with skilfully constructed roads, 
canals, and buildings of every description. Beneath the rule of her 
incapable and effeminate successors, the Assyrian empire fell gra- 
dually into decay, till at length the warlike governor of the Medes 
rose against the unworthy sovereign, took possession of Nineveh, and 
Sardanapalus reduced the last king, Sardanapalus, who was notorious 
b.c. 888. for his luxury, intemperance, and voluptuousness, to such 
straits, that he burnt himself in his palace, together with his wives 
and treasures. Nevertheless, in the following century, a few warlike 
sovereigns, (among whom were Salmanasser and San- 
b.c. 7:30. herib, were distinguished by their deeds and fortunes in 
Sanherib, Palestine,) were successful in again restoring the Assyrian 
empire, and increasing it by fresh conquests. But the new 
Assyrian monarchy was, like the old, but of short duration. A hundred 
Nineveh ana twenty-five years after the reign of Salmanasser, Ni- 

destroyed, neveh was taken and destroyed by the Medes and Chal- 
deans, and the victors divided the land among themselves. 
Babylon fell to the lot of the Chaldeans. Antiquities and works of 
art are still dug from the ground where Nineveh once stood. 

§ 10. Erom this period, the Chaldeans or Babylonians possessed 
the ascendancy, particularly during the reign of the warlike and 
Nebuchad- powerful Nebuchadnezzar, who laid Judah under tribute. 
nezzar, But the splendour of Babylon soon passed away. A 

b.c. GOO. generation later, the Medes were the dominant race, and 



INTRODUCTION. | \ 

after thern. came the Persians. Babylon was provided with wonderful 
architectural works by the Chaldees. A broad and lofty wall sur- 
rounded the whole city, which is said to have had a circumference of 
nearly sixty miles. The two imperial palaces on the banks of the 
Euphrates, the square and lofty temple of Baal the god of the sun, 
which was magnificently adorned with statues and ornaments of gold 
and served the purposes of an observatory, were, together with the 
hanging gardens, the most remarkable objects. 

In building the Chaldeans made use of burnt bricks. Their water 
buildings, bridges, canals, dams, dikes, and so forth, were the most 
remarkable of their works. The worship of the heavenly bodies led 
the Babylonian priests (who were more especially called Chaldeans), 
to make astronomical observations ; they reckoned the course of the 
sun, and divided the year : but as they mingled astrological specu- 
lations with their science, they fell into errors, and wandered -about 
the world at a later period, as diviners, interpreters of dreams, and 
magicians. We are also indebted to the Chaldeans for the divisions 
of weights and measures, and for the elements of geometry and 
medicine. The fertility of the land, and their extensive commerce, 
brought wealth and its necessary attendants, splendour and luxury. 
The Babylonians were, in consequence, not less celebrated for their 
luxurious productions, their fine linen, their sumptuous carpets, &c, 
than they were renowned and infamous for their sensuality, their 
luxury, and their voluptuousness. Masses of ruins, and heaps of 
rubbish, and a few monuments with inscriptions, mark the spot 
where once stood the world-renowned Babylon. 

T. THE EGYPTIANS. 

§ 11. The Creeks called Egypt a gift of the Nile ; for it is from 
the regular annual overflow of the river, occasioned by rains in the 
high lands of Abyssinia, the waters of which are drawn off by all 
sorts of means, canals, dams, and cisterns, that the land preserves its 
remarkable fertility. The valley of the Nile was divided, even at a 
remote period, into three parts. Eirst, Upper Egypt, where the vast 
and striking ruins of Thebes with their gigantic fragments of statues 
and columns, their colossal sphinxes, (lions, with women's heads,) the 
tombs of kings hewn in the bare rock, the subterranean catacombs, 
and the prostrate colossal statue of Memnon which is reported to 
have uttered musical sounds at the rising of the sun, yet testify to 
the former splendour and magnificence of the priestly city. Secondly, 
Middle Egypt, with its capital, Memphis, the vicinity of which is also 
distinguished by the magnificent remains of an historical antiquity. 
Among these are the ruins of the Labyrinth, a building consisting of 
a number of intricate passages communicating with each other, and 
the group of pyramids, which to this day are gazed upon with amaze- 



]2 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

ment, as the miracles of architectural science. These pyramids are 
built of hard freestone, rise from a square base, and terminate at an 
immense height, in a point, or small flat surface ; they appear to have 
served as the sepulchral memorials of kings. Thirdly, Lower Egypt, 
with its ancient metropolis, Heliopolis, which was, however, afterwards 
eclipsed by Alexandria, and the historically remarkable places, Sais, 
Naucratis, &c. Two branches of the Nile enclose Lower Egypt, and 
together with the sea, give it the triangular form from whence it 
derives its name, Delta. 

§ 12. Egypt possessed at an inconceivably early period, numberless 
towns and villages, and a high amount of civilization. Arts, sciences, 
and civil professions, were cherished there, so that the Nile land has 
always been regarded as the mysterious cradle of human cidture ; 
but the system of castes checked free development and continuous 
improvement. Every thing subserved to a gloomy religion and a 
powerful priesthood, who held the people in terror and superstition. 
The doctrine, that after the death of man the soul could not enter 
into her everlasting repose unless the body were preserved, occa- 
sioned the singular custom of embalming the corpses of the departed 
to preserve them from decay, and of treasuring them up in the shape 
of mummies, in shaft-like passages and mortuary chambers. Through 
this belief, the priests, who as judges of the dead possessed the power 
of giving up the bodies of the sinful to corruption, and by this means 
occasioning the transmigration of their souls into the bodies of 
animals, obtained immense authority. The religion of the Egyptians 
consisted partly in the worship of the heavenly bodies, but also bore 
relation to the Nile and the natural qualities of the country. Their 
principal deities were Osiris, Serapis, and Isis ; but as besides these 
gods, the animals sacred to them were objects of veneration, the 
Egyptian religion gradually degenerated into the most monstrous 
animal worship. This degeneracy became apparent in then' art. At 
first, the statues of their gods were represented with the human 
figure, although in stiff attitudes and in stern and solemn repose ; 
but they appeared at a later period with the heads of beasts, and 
soon after under an exclusively animal form. Notwithstanding the 
magnificence of their architectural productions, and the vast tech- 
nical skill and dexterity in sculpture and mechanical appliances which 
they display, the Egyptians have produced but little in literature or 
the sciences ; and even this little was locked up from the people in 
the mysterious hicroglyphical writing which was understood by the 
priests alone. There were three kinds of these hieroglyphics, which 
are met with on the writing-rolls which the Egyptians prepared out 
of an aquatic plant called papyrus, and on the obelisks,- — pointed, four- 
cornered columns, hewn from a single block of granite, and erected 
before the porticos of the temples. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

Egypt was already an object of wonder and curiosity in the time of 
the Eomans ; and such she remains even to the present day. The 
fact is attested by the eleven obelisks and the innumerable Egyptian 
carvings in the hardest stone at present in Borne, and by the multi- 
tude of mummies, ancient utensils, trinkets and ornaments, rolls of 
papyrus, and so forth, that are to be met with in all the museums, and 
cabinets of natural history in Europe. But much as we may admire 
the patience of the Egyptians and their skill and dexterity in the 
practice of their arts, we are every where struck with a want of free 
development, creative industry, and personal freedom. The curse 
of the caste system lay upon every external manifestation of life, 
whilst superstition and religious oppression gave a gloomy colouring 
to existence, and disturbed every cheerful and pleasurable feeling. 

§ 13. So long as the priestly class possessed the government and 
elected the king, the "hundred-gated" Thebes may have remained 
the principal city ; but when the Egyptians were subjected to hostile 
attacks from neighbouring nations, and the military caste attained in 
consequence to greater importance, Memphis appears to have been 
chosen as the metropolis of Middle Egypt. Warlike sovereigns were 
about this time successful in raising the military caste to an equality 
with the priestly, so that they divided their privileges between 
Sesostris, them, and were both subjected to the kingly power. 
b.c. 1500. Sesostris, who reduced the Ethiopians to tribute, and 
who is said to have reigned over a considerable portion of Asia and 
Mceris and Africa, is particularly mentioned as one of these vic- 
Cheops, 1080. torious monarchs. After him, Mceris and Cheops are the 
most renowned kingly names. The first, on account of the lake 
which he constructed, and which was named after him, and 
which appears to have served the purpose of regulating the inun- 
dations of the Nile; the second, as the builder of the largest 
of the pyramids, which is 450 Erench feet in height, and on 
which 100,000 men are said to have been employed for 40 years. 
The lives and actions of these ancient kings are shrouded in darkness. 
The gloom begins to disappear about the middle of the seventh 
century, when the royal house of Sais, in Lower Egypt, assumed the 
sovereignty, in the person of Psammeticus. Eor the purpose of 
weakening the power of the priests, Psammeticus entered into 
alliance with the Greeks, and received Greek soldiers and colonists 
into Egypt. Disgusted at this proceeding, 240,000 Egyptians mi- 
grated into Nubia, and there founded a state of their own. Among 
Necho, the successors of Psammeticus, Necho, the founder of the 

b.c. 800. Egvptian naval and maritime power, and the war- 
like Amasis, are particularly to be mentioned. The son of the 
latter, Psammenitus, lost both kingdom and victory to the Persians, 
in the bloody battle of Pelusium (Suez). The Persians afterwards 



14, THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

reigned over Egypt for a period of 200 years. But the Egyptians 
did not unite themselves with their conquerors ; they retained their 
own manners, institutions, and religious customs, together with their 
aversion to every thing foreign. 

YI. THE PHOENICIANS. 

§ 14. On the narrow strip of coast between the Mediterranean 
and Lebanon, dwelt the maritime and commercial people of Phoenicia 
in many popidous towns, among which Tyre and Sidonwere the most 
remarkable. The Phoenicians, an active and energetic race, would 
not subject themselves to the restraints imposed by the caste system. 
On the contrary, every city with the territory adjacent to it, consti- 
tuted an independent commonwealth, at the head of which stood an 
hereditary sovereign, whose power however, was greatly restricted 
by the priests and nobles. Collectively they formed a league of 
towns, of which, at first Sidon, and afterwards Tyre, was the chief. 
Intellectual activity and diligence in business led this people to many 
discoveries ; among them were glass, the art of dyeing purple, and of 
writing by means of letters. They were also distinguished by their 
skill in casting metals, weaving, architecture, and various other 
matters. Sidonian garments, Tyrian purple, Phoenician glass, and 
articles of ivory, gold, and other metals, were precious and coveted 
wares in all antiquity. The favourable situation of their country 
made them sailors, and the cedars of Lebanon supplied the materials 
for ship-building. Not only did the Phoenicians navigate the coasts 
and islands of the Mediterranean in their splendid ships, for the 
purpose of trafficking both in their own productions and in those of 
the distant East, spices, frankincense, oil, wine, corn, and slaves, 
but they even ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, (Straits of 
Gibraltar,) purchased tin from the inhabitants of the British Isles, 
and amber from the people of the East Sea, and undertook venturous 
expeditions to India (Ophir) and the southern parts of Arabia. 
They are even said to have doubled the Cape of Good Hope, in a 
voyage of three years' duration, undertaken at the instigation of 
Necho, king of Egypt. They established colonies on Crete and 
Cyprus, at Sicily and Sardinia, in the south of Spain (Tartessus 
and Gades, now called Cadiz), and in northern Africa. The 
commercial city, Carthage, founded there by the Tyrians, 
under the conduct of Queen Dido, soon eclipsed the 
renown of the mother country. The Phoenicians paid less attention 
than the other Oriental nations to the cultivation of religion. Their 
worship of Moloch was accompanied with frightful human sacrifices, 
that of Baal with obscene rites. 

§ 15. In their contests with the warlike nations of Asia, the 
Phoenicians disjnaycd both courage and patriotism. "When 



INTRODUCTION. 1 5 

the Assyrian Salmanasser subjected Phoenicia to his 
sceptre, and compelled the inhabitants to pay tribute, 
the Tyrians built New Tyre upon a neighbouring island, and defended 
it Avith success for five years against the superior power of the 
enemy. The merchant fleet of Tyre soon again ruled the sea. 
Even the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, who had subdued 
b.c. 590. t ^ e ma i n i an d f Phoenicia, and had transplanted the in- 
habitants of Old Tyre along with the Jews into the interior of his 
kingdom, was unable to shake the courage of the New Tyrians. But 
these repeated attacks seem to have broken their power ; for when 
shortly after, the Persians subjected the countries of western Asia, 
Tyre also lost its freedom and independence. Phoenicia became 
a Persian province. In the middle of the fourth cen- 
b.c. 350. tur ^ ^g oppression of the foreign governor produced 
a rebellion, at the head of which stood Sidon. It was unsuccessful. 
Sidon fell into the hands of the Persian king ; and when this prince 
gave orders for the execution of the principal citizens, the inhabitants 
themselves set fire to the town, and consumed themselves and their 
treasures. Tyre existed some time longer ; but when Alexander the 
Macedonian overthrew the Persian empire, and Tyre, proud of its 
former glory, ventured to oppose the conqueror, it was 
taken and destroyed after a seven months' siege. It 
never recovered from this stroke ; and its trade and maritime 
power were transferred to Alexandria. 

VII. THE PEOPLE OP ISRAEL. 

§ 16. "Whilst the whole world was sunk into idolatry, a people 
of shepherds of Semitic origin, dwelling in Mesopotamia, pre- 
Abraham, served the original belief in a single God. Abram 
b.c. 2000. (Abraham), one of the ancestors of this nomadic race, 
left his native pastures at the command of Jehovah, and settled 
hhnself with his cattle, his men-servants and maidens, .and his 
brother's son, Lot, in "the promised land" Canaan (Palestine), 
where they continued their pastoral life and received from the 
inhabitants the name of the "Strangers from the other side" 
(Hebrews). Isaac, who was born to Abraham by Sarah at an 
advanced period of life, continued the race; whilst Tshmael, Abra- 
ham's son by his concubine Hagar, is regarded as the progenitor of 
the Arabs. Isaac took to wife Eebekah, one of his own relatives 
acknowledging the true faith, who brought him two sons, Esau and 
Jacob. By the cunning of his mother, Jacob, the younger son, con- 
trary to the usage that had hitherto obtained, was declared to be the 

Jacob cnief °f ^ s race ' ^ ut coulc * onl y S 3 "™ 1 P ossess i° n °f nis 

inheritance after a long period of probation. Jacob had 

twelve sons, biit as he distinguished Joseph, the gift of his beloved 



IQ THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Joseph, Kaehel, by his peculiar affection, the others, moved by 

b.c. 1800. envy, entertained the purpose of getting rid of their 
brother, and sold him to some travelling merchants who took 
him with them into Egypt. As Joseph held fast his integrity, 
God rewarded him with prosperity and wisdom. By his skill 
in the interpretation of dreams he obtained the favour of the 
Egyptian king, and arrived at high dignity and honours. He saved 
the land from famine, and by this means attained such credit, that he 
was permitted to invite his father and brethren into Egypt, and to 
bestow upon them the fertile pasture lands of Goshen. The He- 
brews were generally called Israelites, from Jacob's surname of 
Israel. 

§ 17. At first the Israelites were prosperous in the rich meadows 
of Goshen. But when Joseph was dead, and fresh rulers who knew 
nothing of his services, assumed the government, dislike to strangers, 
and contempt for the pastoral state, incited the Egyptians to cruelty 
and severity against the foreigners. They commenced by imposing 
severe socage duties upon them, and when it was found that despite 
this oppression they increased so rapidly that the Egyptians at length 
became alarmed at their superior numbers, Pharaoh gave command- 
ment to drown all the newly-born male children in the Nile. 
Moses Moses would have experienced this fate had not the 

b.c. 1500. daughter of Pharaoh, who chanced to be walking on the 
banks of the river just as he was about to be drowned, taken pity on 
the infant and saved him. Moses came to the Egyptian court, where 
lie was carefully brought up, and instructed in all wisdom. The 
slaughter of an Egyptian whom he saw misusing one of the Israelites, 
compelled him when he was forty years old, to fly to the deserts of 
Arabia. It was here that he was inspired with the lofty purpose of 
becoming the deliverer of his people from their Egyptian bondage. 
At first Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites depart ; but after terror 
and distress had been spread over the land by the ten plagues which 
were sent upon it, he at length consented to the retreat required by 
Moses and his brother Aaron. The attempt to bring them back 
again by force after their passage over the Red Sea, was attended 
with the destruction of the pursuers. 

§ 18. Eor a period of forty years Moses led a discontented 
people, Avho were often pining for the fleshpots of Egypt, wandering 
in the desert, for the purpose of strengthening their bodies, restoring 
virtue and a love of freedom to their minds, and of rearing up a 
young ami hardy race, who should possess strength and courage for 
the conquest of the promised land. It was during this pei'iod that 
I In' ten commandments, and other laws relative to the religion and 
policy of the Israelites, were delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. 
These laws were preserved in the ark of the covenant, the most 



THE EASTERN RACES. 17 

sacred of tabernacles. Their interpreters were the high priests, to 
whose offices Aaron and his posterity were appointed. By their side 
stood the Levites, as sacrificing priests, teachers, lawyers, and physi- 
cians. According to the system of Moses, Jehovah himself was king 
and ruler ; it was in his name that the elders of the tribes conducted 
the temporal government, whilst the chief priest and Levites super- 
intended the affairs of religion. Sacrifices and feasts (those of the 
passover, pentecost, and tabernacles) formed the pleasant bond be- 
tween Jehovah and the "chosen" people. In the sabbath-year the 
lands were left untilled, and that which grew spontaneously was 
given up to the poor. In every fiftieth year (year of Jubilee), lands 
that had been alienated, were returned to their original possessors, 
that property might not be too unequally divided. Moses determined 
upon agriculture in preference to the pastoral life, as the principal 
occupation of his people. 

§ 19. It was not permitted to the great lawgiver to lead his people 
into the promised land. He gazed from the top of Mount Kebo on 
the beautiful plains of the Jordan, and then departed from among the 
Joshua, living, after having chosen Joshua as his successor, and 

b.c. 1450. exhorted the assembled people to hold fast upon the 
God of their fathers, and to root out the Canaanites. Scarcely, how- 
ever, had the people, under the command of the valiant Joshua, 
conquered the Amorites and the other tribes, than they gave up war, 
and demanded the distribution of the vanquished lands. This distri- 
bution took place by lot (in accordance with the regulation of Moses) 
among the twelve sons of Jacob, in such a way that Ephraim and 
Manasseh succeeded to equal shares; while on the other hand the 
descendants of Levi had no distinct inheritance, and received only a 
few towns and a tenth part of the productions of the earth. Eeuben, 
Gad, and half Manasseh, chose the pasture land on the east of Jordan, 
the others settled on the western side of the river. 

§ 20. But many powerful tribes, as the Ammonites and Philistines, 
were still left unsubdued, and disturbed the Israelites in the enjoy- 
ment of their possessions. Bloody and destructive wars induced a 
rude and barbarous condition of society; and the Israelites not 
unfrequently forgot the living Gfod who had brought them out of 
bondage, and fell into the practice of idolatry, until misfortunes and 
defeats again brought them back to a better understanding. At 
these times men of heroic courage would arise, defeat the enemy in 
victorious fields, and restore the ancient manners and the faith of 
then ancestors. These men are called Judges, in the sacred writings. 
. . . The most renowned among them are Gideon, Jephthah, Samson 
Samuel, * ne strong, and the heroic Deborah. But the high priest 

b.c. 1150. Samuel, a pious and patriotically disposed man, was the 
first who was successful in reuniting the ancient ties which bound 

c 



18 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

the people of Israel to their God, and in restoring to the laws of 
Moses their former ascendancy. He overthrew the Philistines, and 
founded the schools from whence proceeded those inspired oracles of 
the people, distinguished in the Bible by the name of Prophets. 

§ 21. The sons of Samuel did not walk in the steps of their father, 
hut perverted the right. At this period the Israelites, in imitation 
of the surrounding nations, desired a king, who as perpetual chief 
might lead them forth to battle and victory. It was in vain that the 
grey-headed high priest sought to dissuade them from this request, 
whilst he pourtrayed in the strongest colours the misery and oppres- 
sion that awaited them under a kingly ride. The Israelites persisted 
gjroj in their intention, and Samuel anointed Saul, of the tribe 

u.c. 1095. of Benjamin, to be king. Said was a man of majestic 
person, brave, experienced in military affairs, and successful in the 
field ; but as he placed his trust in his army, and did not hold fast 
the commandments of Jehovah, he was rejected, and Samuel anointed 
the shepherd lad, David, of the tribe of Judah. Saul at this time was 
attacked with a spirit of melancholy, which nothing but the harp of 
David could alleviate. But envy of the renown acquired by David 
in the wars against the Phdistines, and a secret presentiment of the 
destiny that awaited him, m'ged Saul to hate and persecute the young 
shepherd ; Said's son, Jonathan, on the other hand, was devoted to 
him with true affection. David nevertheless, in the midst of dangers 
and distresses, escaped the attempts of his enemy, and at length 
when Saul, after having sustained a defeat, threw himself in despair 
upon his sword, David was gradually recognized as king by the whole 
of the tribes. 

Davitl § 22. The reign of David is the glorious period of 

n.c. 1050. Jewish history. By means of successful wars he enlarged 
his kingdom to the south and east; he made the Syrian town, 
Damascus, his footstool, and broke for ever the power of the Philis- 
tines ; he conquered Jerusalem, the chief city of the Jebusites, 
together with the strong fortress Zion, and selected it for a residence, 
and the central point of a solemn religious worship ; and with this 
view commanded the ark of the covenant to be brought thither. 
David was also a great poet, as is abundantly shown by his admirable 
religious hymns, (Psalms) and despite many grievous transgressions, 
he still remained the "man after God's own heart," since by sorrow 
and repentance he always regained the forgiveness of Jehovah. The 
end of his reign was disturbed by the rebellion of his beloved son, 
Solomon, Absalom, who was led astray by evd counsellors. The 
b.c. 1000. Avise Solomon completed the work of his father. As 
David had been great in war, so his son was illustrious in the arts of 
peace. He adorned his capital with splendid buddings, and erected 
on the hill of Moriah, by the aid of Tyrian artists and masons, the 



THE EASTERN RACES. 19 

magnificent temple which bore his own name, and which on account 
of the richness of its gilding and ornaments, was the object of uni- 
versal admiration. But Solomon departed in many things from the 
laws of Moses. He traded with the neighbouring nations, and thereby 
acquired incalculable wealth, which stimulated his love of luxury, 
pleasure, and magnificence ; he took to himself wives from a foreign 
people, permitted them the exercise of their idolatrous worship, and 
even took part in it himself. His lofty mind and admired wisdom 
did not secure him from folly. His love of magnificence and extra- 
vagance were the occasion of oppressive taxes, and even during his 
own life an insurrection broke out under the guidance 
of Jeroboam. This was indeed suppressed, and the 
originator compelled to take flight, but when Solomon's son 
Rehoboam, Behoboam, pursued the same course his father had taken, 
b.c. 975. and repelled with threats the prayers of the people for 
relief, many of the tribes fell from him, and chose Jeroboam for king. 
Judah and Benjamin alone remained faithful to the legitimate royal 
race. 

§ 23. Prom this division there arose two states of unequal magnitude, 
the kingdom of Israel, or Ephraim, formed of ten of the tribes, with 
its capital Sichem, and Samaria, and the kingdom of Judah, consisting 
of two tribes, with its chief city Jerusalem. As Jerusalem preserved 
the ark of the covenant, and was in consequence regarded by the Le- 
vites and many pious Israelites as the true chief city, Jeroboam set up 
the worship of idols in the southern and northern parts of his king- 
dom, a sin which was shared by the whole of his successors. One 
of the most impious among these was Ahab, whose wife, Jezebel, a 
Tyrian, introduced the blasphemous Phoenician worship of Baal, and 
raged violently against those who would not do him homage. By 
means of her daughter, Athaliah, who was married to a king of Judah, 
the same worship was introduced into Judah, and favoured by the 
court. The consequences were, intense hatred and contention and 
at length civil wars between the two kingdoms, by which they were 
mutually weakened ; they then entered into alliances with other 
nations. The voices of the prophets who boldly foretold the destruc- 
tion of the state if the worship of Jehovah were thrust aside for the 
worship of idols, died away unheeded. When the land was threatened 
by the Babylonians and Assyrians, Isaiah referred to the coming 
Messiah as the only Saviour ; and Jeremiah lived to see that destruc- 
tion of the state, concerning which he had in vain warned the blinded 
people. 

§ 24, The Ephraimitic kingdom of Israel was first subjected to 
tribute by the Assyrians. But when the king, Hoshea, entered into 
an alliance with the Egyptians for the purpose of escaping from this 
impost, the Assyrian king marched an army into the land, subdued 

c2 



20 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Samaria, and led away the king, with the greater portion of his 
subjects, into the Assyrian captivity. Foreigners entered 
into the land, and the intermixture of these with the 
remaining Israelites gave rise to the Samaritans. Judah survived 
130 years louger. After the fall of Israel it became tributary to 
Assyria. But when this nation went to war with Egypt, the king 
of Judah sided with the latter, and refused the tribute to the Assy- 
rians. The Assyrian king, Sanherib, (Sennacherib) came up against 
Jerusalem and laid siege to it. But Judah's hour was not yet come 
whilst the pious Hezekiah sat upon the throne. The host of the 
Assyrians was almost entirely destroyed in a siugle night, and San- 
herib (Sennacherib) retreated from the land in horror. It was to the 
victorious Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, that it was first allotted to 
make an end of the nation polluted with new idolatries. He took 
Jerusalem, plundered the temple, and carried away the 
king and the chief inhabitants into the ulterior of his 
dominions, and oppressed with a heavy hand those whom he suffered 
to remain. This induced the last king, Zedekiah, to try once more 
the chances of war, but he met with little success. Ne- 
buchadnezzar burnt the city and temple, slaughtered the 
citizens, and at length carried away the deluded king and the greater 
part of his people into the seventy years' Babylonian captivity. In 
their necessity the Jews again sought the God of their fathers, and 
found grace in his sight. One of the prisoners, the prophet Daniel, 
an'ived at high honours, and alleviated the fate of his brethren. 
After some years, Babylon was conquered by the Per- 
sians, upon which Cyrus suffered the Jews to return to 
their homes. Only a small portion returned at first, under the 
conduct of Zcrubbabel, these commenced the rebuilding of the temple. 
But as they avoided all intercourse with the Samaritans, this people, 
moved by hatred, endeavoured in every possible way to disturb their 
purpose. They procured a prohibition of the budding which was 
already commenced, and which in consequence was not completed till 
b.c. 515. the reign of Darius. During the reign of Artaxerxes in 
b.c. 460. Persia, fresh troops, led by Ezra and Nehemiah, returned 
to their homes, rebudt the city, and re-established the laws of Moses. 
They had been taught by suffering, that salvation and deliverance 
were only to be found in a stedfast adherence to the faith of their 
ancestors ; and from this time forth they were more careful in 
shunning idolatry, and all contact with idolatrous nations. 

Ylir. MEDES A1S T D PERSIANS. 

§ 25. Media and Persia, two countries where savage and occasion- 
ally attractive mountainous regions alternate with rich pasture 
grounds, and fertile arable lands, were formerly inhabited by tribes 



THE EASTERN RACES. 21 

who drew their origin from the ancient Zend races dwelling farther 
to the eastward. They possessed a remarkable religion which was 
founded by the ancient sage, Zoroaster, and had been delineated by 
him in the sacred books of the Zend-Avesta. According to this 
system, there are two first principles ; a spirit of light, Omuzd, and 
an evil spirit of darkness, Ahriman. Both of these have armies of 
similar spirits under them, and are to wage perpetual war with each 
other till the end of the world, when the spirit of light will become 
victorious ; upon this the evil spirit is to disappear, and the human 
race to be rendered happy. This doctrine was veiled by a powerful 
hierarchy of priests, the magi, in a solemn religious ceremonial. The 
god of light was worshipped under the form of the sun and of fire, 
the spirit of darkness was propitiated by sacrifices and prayers. 

§ 26. The Medes remained for a long time under the dominion of 
foreign nations ; at length they roused their courage and fought 
valiantly for their freedom. But a few warlike kings soon after 
succeeded in suppressing the newly-acquired liberties of the people, 
and in establishing a military despotism. They at the same tune 
subdued some of the neighbouring people, and among others the 
cognate tribe of the Persians. But their rule was but of short 
Astyages, duration ; Astyages, the last of the Median kings, had a 
e.c. 575. vision, which the diviners interpreted to signify, that the 
son of his daughter should at some time rule over Media and west- 
ern Asia. Alarmed at this, he gave his daughter in marriage to a 
petty prince of the subjected tribe of Persians, and when she brought 
forth a son named Cyrus, he commanded him to be put to death 
in the obscurity of a remote forest. Cyrus only escaped the fate 
designed for him, through the compassion of the shepherd to whom 
the execution of the murder was entrusted. He was brought up as 
the son of the shepherd, but whilst yet a youth gave such evidence 
in his pastimes of an innate spirit of command, as led to his being 
brought before the king and recognized. Astyages, pacified by the 
diviners, now allowed Cyrus to be brought up in a manner suitable to 
his rank, and sent him back when he had arrived at maturity, to 
his parents in Persia. It was here that the project of freeing his 
brave but subjected countrymen from the yoke of the Medes, and 
leading them forth to victory and conquest, first arose in his mind. 
His mighty spirit and commanding person, compelled the Persians to 
admiration and obedience. He marched against the Medes ; Asty- 
ages, betrayed and overcome, relinquished the throne to his successful 
Cyrus, grandson, who now became the founder of an empire that 

b.c. 560. embraced almost all the civilized nations of Asia. 

§ 27. At this time, King Crcesus, who possessed such 

enormous wealth that his name is become proverbial, 

reigned in Sardis, the principal city of Lydia. Cyrus declared war 



22 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

against him. Croesus, deceived by an ambiguous oracle, passed over 
the boundary stream of the Halys to attack the Persians, but suffered 
a defeat, and was obliged to fly in haste to his capital. Cyrus 
pursued him, took Sardis, and commanded the captured king to be 
cast into the flames. Crcesus already sat bound upon the funeral 
pile, when his recollection of Solon," the wise man of Athens, saved 
him from destruction. Solon had once visited Sardis, and been 
hospitably entertained by the king. Proud of his prosperity, Croesus 
had the sage led through his treasure chambers, and displayed before 
him the whole of his riches. He then asked him who it was that he 
considered to be the happiest of mortals, nothing doubting that Solon 
would name Croesus. The sage however mentioned a few persons, 
who, after leading a virtuous life, had met with a becoming death : 
when Croesus again asked him whether he did not look upon himself 
as a happy man, Solon made the significant reply, " that no man 
could be considered happy before death." These words occurred at 
this moment to the captive king, and he exclaimed bitterly, " Oh ! 
Solon, Solon!" The exclamation awakened the curiosity of Cyrus, 
he had the story related to him, and struck by the truth of the words 
of Solou, set Croesus at liberty, held him in high estimation, and 
consulted him in all his undertakings. 

§ 28. With the same good fortune did Cyrus overthrow the empire 
of Babylon. As the Babylonians, in full security of the impregna- 
bility of their city, were celebrating a festival, and their luxurious 
king, Nabonnedus, (Belshazzar) was contemptuously defiling the 
sacred vessels of the Jews, the Persians penetrated into the town by 
an arm of the Euphrates, the waters of which they had drained off, 
killed the king, and subdued the country. By this 
conquest, Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia, also fell under 
the dominion of the Persians, and the captive Jews received permis- 
sion to return to their country. 

Soon after this, Cyrus undertook an expedition against the Massa- 
getse, a wild nomadic race living near the borders of the Caspian Sea. 
He was successful at first, by means of a military stratagem, and 
destroyed many of the enemy, among them a son of their queen, 
Thorny ris. But shortly after this, he and a great part of his army 
fell into the hands of the Massagetse ; and the queen, thirsting for 
revenge, cast the severed head of the mighty Persian king, with an 
expression of contempt, into a vessel filled with blood. 
Cambyses, § 29. Cambyses, the victorious and tyrannical son of 

b.c. 529. Cyrus, enlarged the Persian empire by the conquest of 
Egypt. The fate of the dwellers on the Nile was frightful. The unfor- 
tunate king, Psammenitus, after witnessing the oppression 
of his subjects, and the dishonour of his family, was put 
to a violent death ; the Egyptian temples and sanctuaries were pro- 



THE EASTERN RACES. 23 

faned, the treasures plundered, and the inhabitants abused. But the 
Persians also encountered a heavy doom. Two armies that Cambyses 
dispatched for the conquest of the priestly state of Ammonium, 
found their graves in the sandy deserts of Libya. This state had its 
central point in the temple and oracle of the ram-horned Jupiter- 
Ammon in the oasis of Siwah, and was, like Thebes, a colony of 
the original pontifical state, Meroe, which had once subsisted in 
Nubia in the midst of a savage negro population. Cambyses died 
after a violent reign of seven years, in consequence of an injury he 
accidentally inflicted on himself with his own sword. The Egyptians 
ascribed his sudden death to the vengeance of the gods for the 
slaughter of the sacred ox, Apis. 

Daring § 30- Some time after this, seven illustrious Persians 

Hystaspes, agreed together, that they would ride in the direction of 
b.c. 521. ^ e rjg^g SUIlj anc [ ^afc the man whose horse neighed 
first should be made king. In this manner Darius, the son of Hys- 
taspes, and the son-in-law of Cyrus, gained the throne, which he 
occupied not without renown, for the space of thirty-sis years. He 
divided the kingdom into Satrapies, regulated the imposts, and con- 
ducted great wars. But his arms were not always successful. "When 
he invaded the nomadic tribes called Scythians, dwelling on the 
steppes of the lower Donau, this people retreated with their tents 
and herds and surrendered their naked fields to the enemy, who were 
soon reduced by want to the brink of destruction ; and when at length 
attacked by the Scythians, were compelled to make a most disastrous 
retreat over the Donau. 

§ 31. The simple manners and military virtue of the Persians soon 
degenerated. The magnificence of the court, where crowds of offi- 
cials and priestly counsellors, of servants and guards, battened on the 
prosperity of the country, destroyed the well-being of the provinces. 
The royal table was furnished with dishes and liquors of the rarest 
quality, brought from the most distant regions. A harem of osten- 
tatious and intriguing women, who frequently had the revenues of 
whole towns and provinces allotted to them to defray the expenses of 
their trinkets and wardrobes, increased this luxury and profuseness. 
The court moved with the seasons. The winter was passed in the 
genial climate of Babylon ; the spring in Susa ; the summer in the 
cool Ecbatana. Numerous gardens arranged for the production of 
fruit, and enclosures where wild animals were preserved, contributed 
to the more refined pleasures of the Persian monarchs when on their 
travels. The governors of the provinces imitated the luxury and 
extravagance of the royal court, to the detriment of their lands which 
were protected neither by laws nor the regular administration of 
justice from arbitrary and despotic authority. Por the rest, the vast 
empire of Persia was but a conglomeration of heterogeneous elements, 



pi THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

where the most diversified manners, institutions, and nationalities, 
were approximated to each other, without internal union, without 
strength, and without support. 



B. HISTOEY OF GKEECE. 

I. GEOGRAPHICAL SUBYEY. — «. THE GBEEK CONTINENT. 

§ 32. Greece is the southern portion of a large half-insular piece 
of land, which appears broad and unbroken in its northern part, 
narrow, irregular, and perforated by bays and inlets on its southern 
coast. It is traversed by numerous ranges of mountains, and consists 
of rocky and hilly tracts which divide the country into a multitude of 
small, secluded, and isolated regions, and favour the production of 
numerous and separate states. Greece is divided into — Northern 
Greece, Central Greece, and Peloponnesus. Northern Greece consists 
of the rude mountain region of Epirus and Thessaly. Between these 
two lands extends, from north to south, the wild and rugged mountain 
range of Pindus, the summit of which is almost always covered with 
snow. Thessaly, with its fruitful plains and luxuriant pasture 
grounds admirably fitted for the breeding of horses, is enclosed by 
another branch of the same range. The vale of Tempe, near Olym- 
pus, the hill of the gods, was celebrated in antiquity for its natural 
beauties. Among the cities may be mentioned Larissa, on the 
Peneus, and Pharsalus, with its battle-field. The southern range of 
hills is called (Eta. Between the foot of these mountains and the 
bay, is a narrow defile that forms the only natural communication 
between Thessaly and central Greece. This is the celebrated pass of 
Thermopylae. Central Greece, or Hellas, traversed by branches of 
the (Etian range, is divided into eight small and independent states. 
The most important among them are, Attica, a hilly country, rich in 
olives, figs, and honey, with its chief city, Athens, its sea-port, Piraeus, 
and the battle-field of Marathon. Opposite Athens lie the two 
islands, JEgina and Salamis ; the first renowned for its early cultiva- 
tion, its trade and navigation ; the latter for the naval engagement 
during the Persian war. Boeotia, a fertde corn-producing country, 
with its seven-gated capital, Thebes ; the heroic Plataea, and the 
renowned battle-fields of Leuctra and Chaeronea. Phocis, with the 
lulls of Helicon and Parnassus, renowned as the seats of the Muses. 
At the foot of the latter, in a spot that was looked upon as the centre 
of the earth, lay the sacred temple city of Delphi with its celebrated 
oracle, and numerous magnificent buddings. 

Peloponnesus (at present Morea) is connected with Central 
Greece- by the isthmus of Corinth. This peninsula is surrounded on 
four of its sides by the sea, and is an entirely mountainous country. 
In its centre is situated the rude region of Arcadia, with its beautiful 



HISTORY OF GREECE. £>5 

valleys and fertile pastures inhabited by a bardy race of shepherds. 
Mantinea and ^Megalopolis, founded by Epaminondas, are among the 
most celebrated of its towns. In the north of the Peninsula, on the 
shores of the Corinthian gulf, lies Achara, with its twelve cities 
which were united together in the third century by the celebrated 
Achaian league. Sicyon, and the rich and art-loving Corinth, were 
also joined in this confederation. To the East was Argolis, a rocky 
region abounding in bays and creeks, with its chief city, Argos ; 
Mycene, the ancient royal seat of Agamemnon and Thynthus, in the 
neighbourhood of which were to be found the remains of gigantic 
buildings (Cyclopean walls). To the south lay the rugged Laconia, 
or Lacedsemonia, with the mountain of Taygetus, and a few fertile 
plains in the valley of the Eurotas ; near this was the renowned city 
of Sparta, with about 60,000 inhabitants. Westward from Lace- 
daemon, extended to the sea-coast the fruitful region of Messenia, 
with the fortress Ithome, and the maritime city Pylos : northward 
from this lay Elis, the territory of which was regarded as sacred, and 
in consequence was never visited with war, together with the city 
and plain of Olympia, rendered famous by the Olympian games. 

b. THE GBEEK ISLANDS. 

§ 33. To the east and west of Greece lay a multitude of large and 
small islands which are of the greatest importance in Greek history. 
They were almost all remarkable for their fertility in wine, oil, fruits, 
and similar productions ; carried on an extensive trade, and possessed 
even at an early period a high amount of civilization. The most 
remarkable among them are, on the west, Corcyra, (at present Corfu) 
renowned even in the earliest ages for its wealth and culture, and 
where at a later period the Corinthians founded a colony ; and the 
stony Ithaca, the dwelling-place of Ulysses. In the southern sea, the 
large island of Crete, which in the time of Homer numbered a hun- 
dred cities, but which was dreaded and infamous on account of it3 
piracy ; Cyprus and Cythera, celebrated for the worship of Yenus ; 
and Bhodes, renowned for the casting of metals, and for its statue of 
the god of the sun (Colossus), seventy cubits in height. But the sea 
the most rich in large and small islands is the iEgean on the east, 
which for this reason has given its name — Archipelago — to every sea 
abounding in islands. Off the eastern coast of Greece, and only 
divided from it by the narrow channel Euripus, lies the long and 
fertile island Euboea (Xegropont), with the maritime and commercial 
cities Eretria and Chalcis. Farther eastward, we meet with Lemnos, 
Thasos, Imbros, and Samothrace, the anciently renowned localities of 
mysterious religious customs. The group of islands lying nearest the 
east coast of Peloponnesus, are called Cyclades, because they he in a 
circle (Cyclos). Among them are Delos, the sacred birth-place of 



26 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Apollo and Diana ; Paros, celebrated for its marble ; and Naxos, for 
its wine. Eastward from tbese we encounter a number of scattered 
islands, the Sporades. The most important, both on account of their 
size and fertility, and the wealth and civilization of their inhabitants, 
are the islands lying off the coast of Asia Minor, Lesbos, with its 
floimshing town Mitylene, Chios, Samos, Cos, and others. Lastly, 
the rocky island of Patmos, celebrated as the residence of the Evan- 
gelist, St. John. 

II. RELIGION Or THE GREEKS. 

§ 34. No wbere did the heathen worship of idols assume a more 
cheerful aspect than among the Greeks, a great part of whose mytho- 
logy was afterwards adopted by the Eonians and incorporated with 
their own religious system. According to the religious views taken 
by the Greeks, the world was originally a rude and formless mass, 
(chaos) from which the heaven and earth separated themselves as 
independent divinities. The earth after this, produced beings of 
superhuman stature and strength, the Titans, who were possessed of 
the supreme authority, until a more spiritual race who gathered 
themselves around the king of heaven, Zeus, or Jupiter, deprived 
them of their power, overcame the giants and Titans who attempted 
to storm the skies, and buried them in the abysses of the earth. 
After the unruly forces of nature and the power of the elements had 
been thus subdued, Zeus erected his throne upon Olympus, whilst 
Pluto governed the gloomy regions of the subterranean world, 
(Hades, Tartarus, Orcus,) and Poseidon, (Neptune) with his trident, 
ruled the sea. Hera or Juno, the queen of heaven, the virgin Pallas 
Athene, (Minerva) armed -with helm and shield, the protectress of 
the Liberal arts, and of all intellectual employment, Apollo, the 
glorious god of light, and some others, were the objects of similar 
veneration. Besides these, woods and ruountains, fields and meadows, 
rivers and lakes, were inhabited by an innumerable multitude of 
divine beings, nymphs, nereids, tritons, sirens who with their magic 
songs allured men to destruction, and many others that frequently 
interfered in human affairs. An heroic race that derived its 
origin from Zeus, was the connecting link between gods and men ; 
whilst the interval between men and the animal tribes was filled up 
by an inferior race of fauns and satyrs, who united together human 
and bestial qualities. Human life and this world of divinities were 
supposed to be most intimately related with each other. Erom the 
moment of his birth a guardian spirit (genius, demon) stood by the 
side of every man for his whole life, exercised an influence upon his 
resolutions and actions, without however interfering with the free 
dom of his will. The household hearth was the residence of sacred 
domestic and family deities, (lares, penates) who preserved the 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 27 

dwelling from evil ; and every important event of life was under the 
guardianship of a separate divinity. In opposition to the Christian 
view, which looks upon the life of this world as a state of probation, 
and of transition to a higher form of existence, the joyous Greeks 
referred all their pleasures to the earthly life, and looked upon the 
shadowy existence of the subterranean world as but its melancholy 
continuation. They nevertheless believed in rewards and punish- 
ments, and in a state of immortal existence. The departed were 
brought by Hermes, (Mercury) the conductor of the dead, before the 
three judges of the lower world, and according to their decision, they 
were either sent to the residence of the righteous (Elysium, the 
happy islands), or to the place of condemnation (Tartarus) . Many 
sacrifices were offered on the graves by the survivors to the souls or 
shadows (manes) of the departed. This free and beautif id system of 
mythology is displayed in the most perfect productions of Greek art 
and poetry. 

I. GREECE BEFORE THE PERSIAN WAR. 
I. THE TIME OE THE TROJAN WAE. 

§ 35. The Pelasgi are believed to have been the most ancient 
inhabitants of Greece. They were an agricultural and peaceful 
people, with a religion that was founded upon the veneration of 
nature, and in which the earth-mother Demeter (Ceres), the wine- 
producer Dionysus (Bacchus), and the oracle-giving nature-god, Zeus 
of Dodona in Epirus, were the divinities that enjoyed the greatest 
reverence. This religion of nature, together with the remains of a 
primaeval architecture, towns and royal cities, and especially the im- 
perishable Cyclopean walls in Peloponnesus which are built of 
squared stones fitted together without cement, lead to the opinion 
that the Pelasgi bore a resemblance in their culture and religious 
institutions to the people of the East ; and that consequently inter- 
course must have existed at an early period between Greece, Asia, 
and Egypt. This view receives corroboration from the legends 
respecting oriental colonists who settled in Greece and diffused the 
seeds of civilization at an inconceivably remote period. In the same 
way Cecrops the Egyptian came to Attica, the Phoenician Cadmus to 
Bceotia, the Phrygian Pelops to the peninsula named after him, Pelo- 
ponnesus. 

§ 36. The Pelasgi were either driven out or subjugated by the 
warlike Hellenes, who gradually subjected the whole of Greece to 
then power. These Hellenes are divided into three tribes : the 
Dorians, in Peloponnesus ; the Ionians, in Attica and the islands ; 
and the JEolians, in Bceotia and the other states. They distinguished 
themselves at an early period by great warlike achievements, and by 



28 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

founding cities and foreign colonies. It is in the poetical legends of 
the twelve labours of Hercules, of the voyage of the Athenian hero 
Theseus to the sea-ruling Crete, and of the daring Argonautic 
expedition, that the first traces of historical facts are preserved, 
distorted and obscured as they may be, by a mass of fables. The 
Thessahan Jason, with the most renowned heroes of his time, (Her- 
cules, Theseus, Castor and Pollux from Lacedseinon, and the Thracian 
musician Orpheus,) undertook the Argonautic expedition in the ship 
Argo to the distant land of Colchis on the east coast of the Black 
Sea, for the purpose of obtaining the golden fleece, which, as the 
legend reported, Phryxus the son of the Thessahan king had years 
before suspended there, and which was watched over by a sleepless 
dragon. This Phryxus and his sister Helle had a wicked step-mother, 
who entertained designs against the lives of the two children. Their 
departed mother, Nephele, the goddess of clouds, appeared to her two 
chfldren and presented them with a wonderful ram, which conveyed 
them across the sea ; Helle, however, fell off and was drowned at the 
spot which has received from her the name of the Hellespont. 
Phryxus reached the land and sacrificed the ram. Jason and his 
companions reached Colchis after a difficult voyage, completed their 
undertaking by the aid of the sorceress Medea, daughter of the king 
of the country, and returned home with their spoil. But the Argo- 
nauts had many wonderful adventures and perfis to encounter on 
their return through the ocean and the mysterious river Eridanus, 
which formed the materials of many a poetical legend. The early 
commercial intercourse between the iEolic race and the inhabitants of 
the distant Asiatic coast, appears to be symbolized by this history of 
the Argonautic expedition. 

§ 37. The greatest event of the Greek heroic age is the celebrated 
Trojan war. In Ilium, or Troy, on the north-west coast 
of Asia Minor, reigned King Priamus over a rich and 
cultivated people. His youngest son Paris carried off Helen wife of 
the Lacedaemonian king, Menelaus, who had hospitably received him. 
The injured husband summoned the princes of Greece to undertake 
an expedition to revenge the affront. This expedition shortly after 
took place under the command of Agamemnon of Mycenae, brother of 
Menelaus, and with the assistance of the most renowned warriors of 
Greece. Achilles and his friend Patroclus from Thessaly, the subtle 
Ulysses from Ithaca, Diomedes from Argos, the sage Nestor from 
Pylos, Ajax, and many others were among the number. The army 
] laving embarked in a vast fleet, sailed for the Asiatic coast from the 
sea-port town of Aulis, where Agamemnon had devoted his daughter 
as a sacrifice to Diana. They found however, the Trojans, especially 
Hector, son of Priam, and iEneas, such valiant opponents, that it was 
only after a ten years' struggle that the city was at length taken and 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 29 

destroyed by an artifice of Ulysses (a wooden Horse filled with armed 
men). Priam and most of his subjects fell either in battle or at the 
destruction of the city ; the rest were carried away as slaves. But 
the victors also suffered many misfortunes. Achilles, Patroclus, and 
many others found an early grave in Ilium. Agamemnon, after a 
troublesome voyage home, was murdered at the instigation of his 
faithless wife Clytemnestra ; and Ulysses, tossed by tempests, wan- 
dered for ten years to inhospitable shores, over islands and seas, 
before it was permitted him again to see his faithful wife Penelope 
and his son Telemachus, and to purge his house of the audacious 
suitors who were contending for the hand of his spouse, and who in 
the meanwhile were feasting themselves upon his property. 

§ 38. Homer. — The Trojan war is of more importance to poetry 
and art than to history, since the combats of the heroes and their 
adventures and wanderings on their return home, formed two legend- 
ary cycles from which the materials of heroic or epic poetry have 
usually been selected. The first and greatest poet who has employed 
these legends in the construction of an immortal work, was Homer, 
who according to tradition, was a blind singer whose life was so 
obscure, that even in ancient times, seven cities contended for the 
honour of having given him birth. The two great heroic poems that 
pass under his name, are the Iliad, in which the battles that took 
place before Troy in the last year of the siege are described, and the 
Odyssea, in which are sung the fate and adventures of Ulysses and 
his companions, on and around Sicily in the western sea. Even a 
mock heroic poem, Batrachomyomachie, in which the combats of 
frogs and mice are described in the same manner as those of the 
Grecian and Trojan heroes, has been attributed to him. But as at 
that time the art of writing was unknown in Greece, these poems 
were at first circulated from mouth to mouth, and portions of them 
were committed to memory and recited by wandering singers (Khap- 
sodists) . Even at a later period, when they had been collected and 
reduced to writing, they were still impressed upon the memory of 
young people, and employed as a means of exciting patriotism, 
religion, and a feeling for the beautiful. As Homer was the chief of 
a school of poets in Asia Minor who under the name of Homerides 
continued for some centuries to compose poetry in a similar spirit to 
their master, so Hesiod, about a hundred years later, became the 
founder of an iEolic school of poetry that flourished more especially 
in Bceotia. We still possess an epic poem of Hesiod on the origin 
and fate of the Grecian deities (Theogony), and a didactic poem, the 
" Works and Days." The hexameter measure derived from Homer 
was from this time made use of in epic poetry. 

§ 39. Shortly after the Trojan war, great disturbances and political 
revolutions took place in Greece. New races of men drove the old 



30 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

ones from the possessions they had hitherto occupied ; these in their 
turn attacked other tribes, till at length the weaker resolved to expa- 
triate themselves, and to found transmarine colonies. The most 
important in its consequences of these emigrations, was 
that undertaken by the Dorians to Peloponnesus, under 
the conduct of the descendants of Hercules (hence called the return 
of the Heraclidae) . This event entirely changed the face of Pelopon- 
nesus, by giving the command of the peninsula to the hardy moun- 
taineers of Doria, instead of the Ionic population that had hitherto 
possessed it. The Dorians gradually subdued Argolis, Laconia, Mes- 
sinia, Sicyon, Corinth, and Megaris beyond the isthmus. They even 
made an irruption into Attica and threatened Athens, 
but were compelled to a retreat by Codrus, the Athenian 
king, offering his life in sacrifice for his country. An oracle had 
declared that victory would incline to the side of those whose king 
should fall. When the Dorians heard this they gave the strictest 
commands that no injury should be done to Codrus. But this long 
disguising himself as a peasant, commenced a quarrel before the gates 
with the outposts, and was killed without being recognized. The 
Dorians despairing of victory, immediately retreated from Athens. 

The old inhabitants of Peloponnesus experienced a triple fate. The 
boldest and strongest quitted their country, and established the 
Ionian colonies on the western shores of Asia Minor, and the islands 
of Chios, Lesbos, Samos, &c. These colonies by the fruitfulness of 
their soil, their navigation, their trade, and their diligence in business, 
soon attained a degree of prosperity and civilization that far sur- 
passed that of the mother country. Those that remained behind, 
either submitted freely to the Dorians, in which case they were com- 
pelled to pay tribute and were excluded from all participation in the 
government but were permitted to retain their possessions, or they 
were subdued with weapons in then' hands, by force of arms, in the 
latter case they were reduced to the condition of serfs or slaves. The 
first class were called Periaeci, or Lacedaemonians, to distinguish them 
from the Doric Spartans ; the second class were styled Helots. 

§ 40. Colonies. — In process of time the Ionian colonies united 
themselves into a confederacy consisting of twelve commonwealths, 
among which Miletus, Ephesus with the celebrated temple of Diana, 
and Smyrna, were the most powerful. The affairs of the union were 
debated in a temple on the promontory of Mycale. The twelve 
colonial towns of the JEolians to the north of Ionia, and the six 
Dorian towns on the south, possessed similar arrangements. Among 
the latter, the town of Halicamassus, the birth-place of the historian 
Herodotus, is the most remarkable. The island of Rhodes also be- 
longed to the latter union. The shores of the Hellespont, (Dar- 
danelles) of the Propontis, (sea of Marmora) of the Pontus Euxinus, 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 31 

(Black Sea) were covered in a similar manner with Greek colonies. 
The most important, were Byzantium, (Constantinople) Sinope, 
Cerasus, (the native land of cherries) and Trapesus. Flourishing 
colonies were also to be found on the coasts of Thrace and Mace- 
donia ; viz. Abdera, Amphipohs, Olynthus, &c. In Lower Italy, the 
number of Greek colonial towns was so great, that the inhabitants 
of the interior spoke Greek, and the whole ' country was known by 
the name of Great Greece. The most celebrated of these towns were 
Tarentum, the wealthy and luxurious Sybaris, and the ancient Cumse, 
the parent city of Naples. The greater part of the beautiful island 
of Sicily was in possession of the Greeks, who founded numerous 
opulent cities there, but none which, in point of size, power, and 
civilization, could compare with Syracuse. On the north coast of 
Africa, Cyrene rivalled Carthage in wealth and commerce, and in 
South Gaul, Massilia was a model of civil order, and a seminary of 
cultivation to the rude population in its neighbourhood. All these 
towns carried on a flourishing trade in the productions of art and the 
produce of the soil. Their vicinities were covered with beautiful 
buildings, and adorned for miles with villas and summer-houses. 
They exercised a salutary influence on the manners and culture of the 
natives, but degenerated in course of time, when wealth and refine- 
ment introduced hvxury, sensuality, and effeminacy. The colonial 
cities occupied the position of blood relations to the mother state, 
but were entirely free and independent. They retained the manners 
and religious customs of the parent city, and honoured it with filial 
piety, but they entered into no dependent relations with it, like the 
colonies of the Romans, or those of modern times. 

II. THE PERIOD OE THE WISE MEN AND LAWGIVERS. 
a. GENERAL VIEW. 

§ 41. Greece never formed a united state, but was separated into 
a number of independent communities, among which the most 
powerful exercised from time to time a predominant influence. 
Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, for the most part. But language, 
manners, and religious institutions, united the different tribes into a 
single nation. They called themselves Hellenes — all other people 
they included under the general term of barbarians. The Greeks, a 
people full of talent, and eminently capable of civilization, arrived at 
a degree of culture that has never since been equalled. Love of 
freedom, and a masculine energy, led them to establish a number of 
independent republics, to which at first they attached themselves 
with enthusiastic patriotism, and in defence of which they poured 
forth their heart's blood, till the rage of faction had choked the more 
generous feelings. Activity and diligence produced general pros- 
perity, and a beautiful land under a sky of unvarying brightness, 



32 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

with a healthy and happy climate, engendered cheerfulness of mind, 
and made existence a pleasure. Simplicity of life lessened the num- 
ber of the wants, and the frugal use of what a fruitful soil and a 
happily situated country produced with hut little labour, banished the 
cares and anxieties of life, and permitted every one to enjoy the 
pleasures afforded by poetry, art, and the sciences. 

§ 12. Certain institutions and establishments connected with reli- 
gion were common to all the Greek races. The first among these 
was the ancient Amphictyonic Council, a court of arbitration to which 
twelve states sent their deputies, and the office of which was to defend 
the national sanctuary at Delphi, and to prevent the wars that broke 
out between single states from becoming too cruel and destructive. 
It was also the defender of the Delphic oracle, with its rich temple. 
In all important undertakings the Delphic Apollo was consulted ; the 
response was given by the inspired priestess, Pythia, from her golden 
tripod, in obscure, and frequently ambiguous and enigmatical expres- 
sions. The temple of Delphi possessed extensive territories, and rich 
treasures in gifts and offerings. The celebration of numerous games, 
as the Pythian, (at Delphi) the Isthmian, Neinsean, &c, was a third 
bond to connect together the various states and families of Greece. 
None of these games however were so renowned as the Olympic, 
which from the time 776 B.C. were celebrated every fourth year in 
the plain of Olympia in Elis. They principally consisted in running, 
boxing, 'wrestling, throwing the discus or spear, and in chariot racing ; 
and the crown of olive branches that was presented to the victor, was 
regarded as an enviable distinction that rendered illustrious not the 
receiver only, but his whole family, and his native dwelling-place. 
The works of artists, poets, and literary men were also objects of 
attention. There is even a tradition that Herodotus, the father of 
history, read the first book of his works at these games, and by so 
doing excited the emulation of Thucydides, the greatest of historical 
writers. The temple of the Olympian Jupiter, and the colossal 
sitting statue of this deity which was overlaid with ivory and gold, 
are among the most splendid examples of Greek art. Pindar of 
Thebes, the great lyric poet, celebrated the victors in these games 
in his immortal odes. 

b. LTCUBGTJS THE SPARTAK LAWGIVER. 

§ 43. The manners of the Dorians gradually degenerated in their 
new possessions ; the affairs of the state fell into disorder, and an un- 
warlike spirit threatened to diffuse itself. To remedy these evils, 
Lycurgus, a patriotic Spartan of royal descent, determined 
to give his native city the pre-eminence over the other 
states, by restoring and establishing the ancient institutions of the 
Dorians. "With this purpose he visited the island of Crete, which 



HISTORY OF GREECE. S3 

was at this time celebrated for its excellent laws ; made himself 
acquainted with the systems that prevailed there, and on his return 
gave the Spartans the remarkable constitution, of which the following 
are the chief outlines : — ■ 

a. Institutions op State. — The whole power of government was in 
the hands of the Dorians, who, without engaging in any other occu- 
pation, devoted themselves entirely to the exercise of arms, the con- 
duct of war, and the affairs of the state. In the assemblies of the 
people they elected the senators, or council of ancients, whose duty it 
was to conduct the government and protect the laws ; and the five 
ephori, who at first superintended the regulations of the city, but 
who afterwards obtained the greatest power of control over the public 
life and actions of those who were in office, and by this means gaiued 
such an authority for themselves, that even kings were subject to 
their tribunal. The senate consisted of twenty-eight members, of at 
least sixty years of age, the presidency of this assembly devolved 
upon the two kings of Sparta, who were chosen from the race of the 
Heraclidse, and whose office was consequently hereditary. At home, 
they possessed more honour than power ; but in war they were always 
the leaders, and had an unlimited command. The fundamental prin- 
ciple of the whole constitution was the equality of property. In 
furtherance of this, the whole lands of Laconia were divided hi such 
a way, that each of the 9000 Spartan families received an equal 
portion. These estates were indivisible, and descended to the eldest 
born by the law of primogeniture. The 30,000 families of periceci 
were in a similar manner provided with lands of less extent, whilst 
the helots were left uncared for, and were obliged, in their capacity of 
serfs, or day-labourers, to till the ground of the Dorians, and to 
deliver a certain proportion of the productions of the soil, in corn, 
wine, oil, and similar matters, to the Spartan magazines. 

i. Mode oe Liee. — The rights of the Dorian depended less upon his 
birth than upon his education ; this, therefore, was entirely under- 
taken by the state. "Weak and deformed children were cast into a 
gulf immediately upon their birth ; the vigorous were removed 
from their parents at the age of six years, and educated in public. 
The great object of this education was to produce bodily hardihood ; 
the gymnastic exercises of the palaestra were, for this reason, one of 
its most important branches. But the understanding was also culti- 
vated, and the Spartan was not less celebrated for his craft and 
shrewdness, than for the terse brevity of his speech, which was after- 
wards distinguished by the term " laconic." The feelings and imagina- 
tion were alone neglected, and consequently, science and poetry were 
neither esteemed nor cultivated in Sparta. Doric art was merely 
distinguished by vast strength, not, like the Ionic, by grace and 
beauty. The male part of the population were divided according to 

D 



34 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

their ages, into companies, who dined together at public meals, (sys- 
sitia) fifteen usually sitting at one table. These meals were extremely 
temperate and simple, and were furnished from the supplies of the 
helots. The so-called black broth and a vessel of wine were the chief 
features of the entertainment. The kings sat at the heads of their 
tables, and received a double portion. Luxury and effeminacy were 
by all means to be avoided ; for this reason the houses were rude and 
devoid of convenience ; no instrument but the axe was permitted to 
be employed in their construction. Money was banished in ordinary 
intercourse, to the end that no one should possess the means of pro- 
curing unnecessary pleasures ; and that the Spartans should not learn 
and accustom themselves to these pleasures, they were not permitted 
to travel into foreign countries, nor were strangers allowed to make a 
long residence in Sparta. The chase, and the exercise of arms were 
the chief employments of those who were grown up ; the cultivation 
of the ground was left to the helots ; trade and business to the 
periceci. The whole life of the Spartan was a preparation for war. 
In the city he lived as though he were in the camp, and the time of 
war was his time of joy and rejoicing. The Spartans marched into 
the field with purple mantles and long hair, and adorned themselves 
before battle as if for a festival. The strength of the army lay in the 
heavy-armed infantry, (hoplites) which consisted of numerous divi- 
sions, and which was in consequence enabled to execute without con- 
fusion, many movements and evolutions. The Spartan never retreated 
from his ranks ; he conquered or died in his place. Strict obedience, 
and subordination of the young to their elders, was the soul of the 
military education and discipline in Sparta, which was the true temple 
of honour of the age. 

§ 44. After these laws had been confirmed by the oracle of 
Delphi, Lycurgus caused the Spartans to take an oath that they 
would never alter any thing contained in them, till he came back 
from the journey he was about to undertake. Upon this he is said 
to have gone to Crete, and there to have died. The consequences of 
the laws of Lycurgus soon became apparent. Not only did the 
hardy Spartans overcome the kindred race of the Messenians in two 
b.c. 743. lengthened wars, but they soon established their power 
b.c. 724. over the whole Peloponnesus. The Messenians were 
reduced to pay tribute in the first of these wars, after their citadel, 
Ithoine, had been destroyed, and their hero, Aristodemus, had slain 
himself on the grave of his daughter whom he had sacrificed. The 
tyranny of the Spartans in a short time provoked the 
Messenians to a second war. In this they at first 
obtained some advantages, by the heroic deeds of the brave and 
cunning Aristomenes ; but the Spartans, inflamed by the war-songs 
of the Athenian poet, Tyrtaeus, finally proved the victors. A part of 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 35 

the Messenians quitted their country, and founded Messina in the 
island of Sicily: those who remained were led into slavery, and 
condemned to the miserable fate of the helots. 

C. SOLON, THE LAWGIVER OE THE ATHENIANS, B.C. 600. 

§ 45. Whilst the Spartans, a race of steady and inflexible charac- 
ter, held fast for centuries the laws of Lycurgus, the lively and fickle 
Athenians introduced among themselves every possible form of 
government. After the glorious death of Codrus, (§ 39) 
the Athenians declared that no one was worthy to be his 
successor, and abolished the monarchy. Some one of the nobles 
(eupatrides) chosen for life to the office of archon, received the 
supreme power. At first the family of Codrus had the preference in 
this election, but as the government with time assumed more and 
more the form of an aristocratic republic, the office of archon was 
b.c. 752. thrown open to the whole body of nobles, and the period 
b.c. 682. of its existence reduced to ten years. For the purpose 
of admitting a greater number to this honour, they at length adopted 
the expedient of electing nine archons every year, who were to super- 
intend the government, the affairs of religion, military matters, legis- 
lation, and the administration of justice. The nobles now held the 
power in their own hands, and excluded the people (demos) from all 
share in the government, or in the administration of the laws. They 
alone gave judgment, because they only were acquainted with the 
unwritten and traditionary statutes ; in this way, arbitrary decisions, 
partiality, and injustice, were of no unfrequent occurrence. This 
induced the citizens in the assemblies of the people, to insist upon 
the framing of written laws. The nobles for a long time refused to 
accede to the demands of the people, but when at length they found 
that further resistance was impossible, they determined upon a differ- 
Draco, ent method of oppressing the commons. They com- 

b.c. 624. missioned one of their own number, Draco, surnamed 
the Cruel, to draw up a code of laws. These proved so severe, that 
they were said to be written in blood. Every offence was punished 
with death. By this means, the nobles hoped again to reduce the 
discontented people to their former state of dependence. Desperate 
struggles followed, and contention and party spirit rose to such a 
height, that the state was reduced to the verge of destruction. At 
this juncture, Solon, one of the seven wise men, and greatly esteemed 
both as a poet, and a friend of the people, proved the saviour of his 
country. He gave the state a new and republican form of govern- 
ment, in which the principal authority was vested in the assemblies 
of the people. These assemblies made the laws, named the judges 
and officers of state, and elected the council of the four hundred ; 
that the nobility, however, should not be deprived of the whole of 

d 2 



S6 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

their power, lie secured to them certain privileges : they alone could 
fill the office of archon, or the high court of the Areopagus, which 
Solon had established to preserve the laws, the government, and 
public morals. This court consisted of the most respected citizens ; 
it superintended the education of youth, and kept an eye upon the 
lives of the burghers, to the end that morality and discipline might 
be preserved, an honourable and industrious course of life might be 
maintained ; and that luxury, riot, and extravagance in dress,, might 
be banished. Solon, at the same time, relieved the necessities of the 
people by the so-called remission of burthens, by which the poorer 
citizens were freed from a portion of their debts, and restored to the 
unfettered enjoyment of their mortgaged estates. After Solon had 
completed these measures, he caused the Athenians to swear that they 
would make no alterations in them for the space of ten years : he then 
set forth on his travels to Asia and Egypt, in the course of which 
he held the before-mentioned conversation (§ 27) with Croesus at 
Sardes. 

d. THE TYRANTS. 

§ 46. All the Grecian states had at first been governed by kings, 
who, as high priests, judges, and leaders of the army, exercised a 
patriarchal power. But the rich and distinguished class who had 
hitherto stood by the side of the king as his councillors, gradually 
attained the upper hand, and seized the first favourable opportunity 
of ridding themselves of the monarch, and of establishing an aristo- 
cratic republic, in which they exercised the supreme power. This 
institution became, in time, extremely oppressive to the people. But 
as the nobles were in the exclusive possession of arms, and of the prac- 
tice of war, it was no easy matter to deprive them of the government. 
This took place for the first time, when an ambitious noble separated 
himself from his order, and placed himself at the head of the people. 
But the ride of the aristocracy was not at once succeeded by a 
democratic government ; on the contrary, the leaders of the peojde 
(demagogues) seized in most of the states upon the supreme power. 
They were distinguished by the name of "tyrants;" by which term, 
however, we are not always to understand a violent and arbitrary 
ruler, but merely one who unites in his own person all the functions 
of government, in a state that had previously been a republic. Many 
of these tyrants possessed great talents for their office, and ruled 
with splendid success. For the purpose of giving employment to 
the people to whom they were indebted for their rise, they erected 
magnificent buildings ; their wealth gave them the means of attract- 
ing artists and poets, whilst their splendid courts contributed to the 
magnificence of the cities. But the government of the tyrants was 
not of long duration. The nobles neglected no means to effect their 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 37 

overthrow ; and in this they were supported by the Spartans, who 
were every where favourable to aristocratic institutions. Their sons, 
who had grown up in the enjoyment of power, frequently forgot the 
consideration they owed to the people, and hastened their own 
destruction by cruelty and despotism. 

Periander § 47. The most celebrated of the tyrants were Periander 

b.c. COO. of Corinth, Poly crates of Samos, and Pisistratus of 
Athens. The first two are well known by poetical legends. Perian- 
der' s friend, the singer, Arion, once wished to return to Corinth by 
ship, from Lower Italy. The sailors, who were greedy after the 
treasures he had acquired in Tarentum, made attempts tipon his life. 
"When every hope of deliverance had vanished, Arion sang, and played 
some notes upon his harp, and then leaped into the waves. The 
dolphins who had followed the ship bore the singer to the shore. He 
hastened to Periander, at Corinth, who easily discovered and punished 
the offenders. Not less celebrated is the story of the ring of 
Polycrates Polycrates. The rich and powerful ruler of Samos was 
b.c. 550. successful in every thing he undertook. At one time, 
when the king of Egypt was paying him a visit, messenger after 
messenger came to announce some fortunate event. Psammetichus 
appeared thoughtful, and warned his friend of the instability of 
fortune and the envy of the gods, and advised him to inflict some 
vexation upon himself to appease the irritated divinities. Upon this 
Polycrates cast a costly and exquisitely wrought ring, upon which he 
placed a great value, from the roof of his house into the sea. But 
the gods despised the gift. On the following day some fishermen 
brought a large fish to the palace, and as the servants were preparing 
it for the table, they discovered the ring in its entrails. They pre- 
sented it with joy to the tyrant, but Psammetichus saw in this the 
omen of approaching misfortune, and took a melancholy leave. 
Shortly after, Polycrates was taken prisoner by the Persians, and 
crucified. 

Pisistratus The most celebrated of all the tyrants, was Pisistratus, 

b.c. 560. of Athens, who ' succeeded, even during the lifetime of 
Solon, in grasping the sole power. He contrived by dint of cunning, 
having first wounded himself and then given out that his life had 
been attempted, to procure a body-guard, and to obtain possession of 
the citadel. His enemies were indeed twice successful in banishing 
him from the city, but he again returned, succeeded in establishing 
himself in the government, and bequeathed it at his death to his two 
sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. Pisistratus, and at first 
his son Hippias, ruled with much glory. Agriculture, 
trade, and commerce, received a great impulse. The poems of 
Homer, that had hitherto only been delivered orally by the wandering 



38 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

singers, (rliapsodists) were now reduced to writing, and by this 
means preserved to posterity. Artists of every kind found in them 
liberal patrons. Athens was embellished with temples and public 
buildings, and the lyric poet, Anacreon, was a resident at Hippias' 
court. But when Hipparchus, who was a man devoted to riot and 
the pleasures of the senses, had been killed at the panathenaic 
festival, by two Athenians, Harmodius and Aristogiton, in revenge of 
some injury they had suffered from him, Hippias gave free scope to 
his violent disposition. By his severity and cruelty he alienated the 
affections of the popular party, and by this means prepared the way 
for his own expulsion. He took refuge with the Persian king, 
Darius, and encouraged him in his design of making war upon the 
Athenians. Shortly after his departure, the democratic republic was 
established in Athens. 

THE SEVEN WISE MEN. — PTTH1GOEAS. 

§ 48. Periander of Corinth, and Solon of Athens, were numbered 
among the seven wise men ; of the remainder, Hales of Miletus, the 
founder of the Ionic school of philosophy, was the most renowned. 
Their principles and practical rides of life were embodied in short 
mottos, as "Know thyself," "Avoid excess," "Consider the end," 
" Be watchful for opportunities," and numerous others. 

One of the most distinguished men of this period, who did not 
however call himself a wise man, (sophos) but only a lover of wisdom, 
(philosophos) was Pythagoras of Samos, the founder of the sect of 
the Pythagoreans, which had many adherents in Crotona and other 
towns of Lower Italy, and enjoyed great respect. The members led 
a life- of temperance and severe morality, had their meals and exercises 
in common, and were devoted with the greatest veneration to their 
master. They practised themselves in mathematics, geometry, and 
music, for Pythagoras is known as the inventor of the theorem, 
which is named after him, the Pythagorean. 

e. LYKIC POETRY. 

§ 49. A cheerful mode of life prevailed at the courts of the 
tyrants, where singers and poets were welcome guests. The severe 
heroic poetry was not suited to the pleasures and amusements that 
were there principally sought after, and its place was in consequence 
supplied by a lighter and less prolix kind, which was distinguished by 
the term lyric, because it was intended to be sung to the lute (lyra). 
All lyric poetry, therefore, originally consisted in cheerful songs, 
which exhorted to the enjoyment of life on account of the shortness 
of its duration, and were filled with the praises of love and wine, 
because they drove away care and trouble. In this style Anacreon 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 39 

of Teos, in Ionia, who passed his life at different courts, and died in 
his eighty-fifth year, was the most celebrated ; and for 
B ' c ' ' this reason, these kind of songs are called Anacreontic. 

If the shortness of life, and the transitory character of every thing 
earthly, gave occasion to Anacreon to exhort to the enjoyment of 
existence, there were not wanting others to whom these considerations 
were a source of melancholy and sorrow, and who poured forth their 
complaints over the instability and uncertainty of human happiness. 
This style was called the " elegiac," and was usually composed in a 
measure consisting of hexameters and pentameters united (disticha). 
The best known elegiac poets are Mimnermus of Colophon, and 
Simonides of Ceos. Those lyrical compositions that are distinguished 
by a more lofty feeling, and in which the poet sings with enthusiasm 
or passion of some sublime object, are called "odes." 
Sappho of Lesbos, a poetess celebrated for her amatory 
songs, and her voluntary death, distinguished herself in this style of 
composition. But the Theban, Pindar, was the first who gave to the 
ode its full perfection. At a later period, the term "lyric" was applied 
to all the shorter specimens of poetry, even though they were not 
fitted to be sung to music. Thus satire, the object of which is to 
punish the vices and failings of men, by ridicule, and by this means to 
bring about their instruction and improvement, is called " lyric poetry." 
b.c. 700. Archilochos, of Paros, the discoverer of iambics, is 

b c. 600. named as the first satiric poet ; at whose side Alcseus of 
Mitylene, the freedom-inspired opponent of the tyrants, occupies no 
unworthy place. In like manner, the short stories where animals are 
introduced acting and speaking, (fables) and the object of which is 
the inculcation of some useful maxim or rule of life, are distinguished 
by the same term. iEsop, a Phrygian slave, whose history is involved 
in obscurity, and disfigured by many fabulous stories, acquired a great 
renown in this sort of composition. 



II. THE FLOURISHING PERIOD OF GREECE. 
I. THE PERSIAN WAE. 

§ 50. The Greek colonial cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, had 
been brought by Cyrus under the Persian dominion. Accustomed to 
freedom, they bore this foreign yoke with the greatest reluctance, but 
were unable to free themselves from it, because the principal Greeks, 
who were appointed by the Persians to the office of prince, or tyrant, 
of the different towns, and who were consequently devoted to the 
court of Susa, knew well how to keep their countrymen in subjection. 
One of the most powerful of these was Histiseus, prince of Miletus. 
He had accompanied Darius in his expedition against the Scythians, 
(§ 30) and had received, together with some other Greeks, the charge 



40 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

of guarding the bridges that had been thrown over the Donau. 
"When the news of the disasters of the Persians became known, Mil- 
tiades, the Athenian, advised that these bridges should be destroyed, 
and the king and his whole army given up to destruction. But 
Histiseus opposed this project, and was afterwards rewarded by being 
invited to the Persian capital, and passing his life there in splendour 
and luxury. But no pleasures could extinguish his longing after his 
native country, and when he found that he was so much mistrusted 
as not to be permitted to depart, he secretly instigated his relative, 
Aristagoras of MUetus, to stir up the discontented Greeks to rebel- 
lion, hoping by this means to gain an opportunity of returning. In 
a short time, Mdetus and the other Greek towns were in arms. 
Sparta, and the other states of the mother country, were applied to 
for assistance ; but Athens only, who Avas afraid that Darius might 
again restore Hippias, who was residing at his court, and the small 
town of Eretria, in Euboea, sent a few ships. At first the insurrec- 
tion appeared successful. The Greeks took and burnt Sardes, the 
chief city of Asia Minor, upon which the revolt spread over the whole 
of Ionia. But fortune soou changed. Divisions among themselves, 
and the superior force of the enemy, occasioned the loss of a mari- 
time engagement, and the capture and destruction of MUetus. Many 
of the Mdesians were led into slavery ; Aristagoras fled 
to the Thracians, where he met with his death ; Histiseus 
was taken prisoner and crucified. Ionia again fell under the dominion 
of the Persians, and Darius vowed a bloody vengeance against the 
Athenians and Eretrians, for the assistance they had afforded the 
rebels. 

§ 51. Mardonius, the son-in-law of Darius, sailed with a fleet and 
army along the coast of Thrace, towards Greece, whilst the Persian 
heralds demanded earth and water, the symbols of submission, from 
the whole of the Greek cities. But the fleet was driven against the 
promontory of Athos by a storm, and the Thracians destroyed a part 
of the land force, so that Mardonius was compelled to lead back the 
remains of his army into Asia, without effecting his purpose. It 
fared no better with the heralds. JEgina, and the greater number of 
the islands indeed, presented the earth and water ; but when they 
made the same demands at Athens and Sparta, they were put to death 
by the inhabitants, in defiance of all the laws of nations. Darius, 
enraged at this insult, dispatched a . second fleet, under the command 
of Dates and Artaphernes. They sailed through the Archipelago, and 
reduced the islands of the Cyclades to submission, and afterwards 
landed at Eubcea. Eretria, after a gallant resistance, fell by treach- 
ery into the hands of the enemy, who razed the city to the ground, 
and sent away the inhabitants into Asia. The Persians marched 
through the island, burning and destroying ; and at length, under the 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 41 

command of Hippias, landed on the coast of Attica, and encamped on 
the plain of Marathon. The Athenians sent in haste to the Spartans 
for assistance ; bnt these not appearing at the proper time, in conse- 
quence of an ancient law of their religion, which forbade them to 
march to battle before a full moon, the Athenians, under the com- 
mand of ten leaders, advanced upon the enemy. The most esteemed 
among these leaders was Miltiades, who had formerly served in the 
Persian army, and was thoroughly acquainted with its qualities and 
tactics. By his direction, 10,000 Athenians, and 1000 Plataeans, 
attached the army of Persians of ten times their number, in a place 
unfavourable for cavalry, and gave them a complete over- 
throw in the battle of Marathon. The victors gained a 
rich booty, and placed the fetters they discovered, and which were 
intended for themselves, on the bodies of their enemies. Great was 
the renown acquired by the Athenians, who here for the first time 
proved that they were worthy of the democratic freedom they had 
lately introduced among themselves ; and centuries later, patriotic 
orators would excite the enthusiasm of the people by calling to their 
remembrance the victory of Marathon. Hippias was one of the slain. 
§ 52. Miltiades, the saviour of Greece, did not long enjoy his 
honours. He persuaded the Athenians to equip a fleet for the pur- 
pose of subduing the islands of the iEgean Sea which had submitted 
to the Persians. But when the attempt upon the island of Paros 
miscarried, the people condemned him to pay the cost of the expedition, 
and to be cast into prison till the debt should be discharged. The 
sentence was carried into execution, and Miltiades died in prison of 
his wounds. Cimon his son paid the debt, and conferred an honour- 
able burial upon his father. 

At that time there lived in Athens two men of remarkable cha- 
racter, Aristides, surnamed the Just, and Themistocles. Both sought 
to render their coimtry illustrious, but by different methods. Aris- 
tides would make use of no means that were not strictly just and 
honourable, nor consent to any measure that excited the scruples of 
his conscience. Themistocles was less scrupulous : he would regard 
nothing but the greatness and advantage of his native city, and not 
unfrequently had recourse to artifice and deceit. Shrewder and more 
talented than his rival, Themistocles soon won a greater share of the 
popular esteem ; and to free himself from a hindrance to his plans, he 
urged the banishment of the more honest Aristides by ostracism 1 . 

1 Ostracism was an arrangement by which any citizen who was so superior to his 
fellows in power, influence, authority, or other qualities, as to endanger the civic 
equality, or the democratic constitution of the state, might be banished for a term 
(usually ten) of years. 

The term was derived from the Greek word for the shell (ostracon) on which the 
name of the accused citizen was written. — Trans. 



42 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

By this means Themistocles became the sole leader of the Athenian 
republic, and he exerted the whole of his influence to obtain an in- 
crease of the fleet ; for it was only by this means that the Athenians 
could attain a superiority to the other states. A declaration of the 
Delphic oracle, that the safety of Athens depended upon its "wooden 
■walls," was of great service to him in the execution of tins 
project. 

§ 53. Darius died in the midst of vast preparations for a fresh 
invasion of Greece. But his successor, Xerxes, a man puffed up with 
pride and arrogance, pursued his father's designs of vengeance, and 
carried on his preparations on such a scale, that he collected an army 
of a million and a half of men, and a fleet of more than 12,000 large 
vessels. But this immense crowd of people of all nations and tongues, 
with habits and weapons of the most diversified character, and accus- 
tomed each to its own method of warfare, was rather a hindrance 
than an assistance to the enterprise. When Xerxes had completed 
his preparations, and with wonderful good fortune had quelled a 
revolt that broke out in Egypt, (a circumstance that contributed not 
a little to swell his confidence,) he ordered his troops, with an enor- 
mous crowd of sutlers, beasts of burden, waggons, and dogs of chase, 
to defile for seven days and nights across the Hellespont, on two 
bridges of boats, and then to march through Thrace and Macedonia 
towards Thessaly, whilst his fleet coasted along the shore to supply 
the army with whatever it needed. To prevent his ships being 
wrecked on the promontory of Athos, as in the first expedition, 
Xerxes separated the mountain from the mainland, by cutting a canal. 
Thessaly submitted without a blow. Bceotia, and a few of the smaller 
states pusillanimously yielded earth and water, and the threatening 
foe still marched on. At this juncture Greece showed what union, 
courage, and patriotism, are capable of effecting. The greater num- 
ber of the states united in a confederacy, and placed themselves under 
the guidance of Sparta. 

It was in July, just at the time of the celebration of the Olympic 
games, that Xerxes arrived at the narrow pass of Ther- 
mopylae, which Leonidas had occupied with three hundred 
Spartans and a few thousands of the allies. It was in vain that the 
Persian king attempted for several days to force a passage ; thousands 
of his troops fell beneath the swords of the brave Greeks ; even the 
10,000 Immortals, as they were called, the flower of the Persian 
army, were compelled to yield to the Spartan valour. At length a 
traitorous Greek conducted a part of the Persians by a footpath over 
the summit of the mountain Octa, who attacked the rear of the 
Greeks. Upon receiving intelligence of this, Leonidas dismissed the 
troops of the allies. He himself, with his 300 Spartans, and about 
700 of the citizens of Thespia, who united themselves to him, devoted 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 43 

themselves to an heroic death for their country. Surrounded on all 
sides, they fought like lions, till, overpowered by numbers, and 
Avearied with slaughter and contest, they sunk to the earth. Leonidas 
and his heroic band lived long in song, and a monument pointed out 
to the traveller the spot where they fell. The Persians now subjected 
Eoeotia without opposition, pursued their devastating course into 
Attica, and reduced Athens to ashes. The old warriors who defended 
the city were slaughtered. The citizens who were fit to bear arms 
were serving in the fleet. The women and children, together with 
the effects, had been sent, by the advice of Themistocles, to iEgina, 
Salamis, and Trazosne. 

§ 54. Themistocles now became the saviour of Greece. The united 
fleet of the Greeks had sailed from the promontory of Artemesium, 
where it had been for some days successfully engaged, into the 
Saronic gulf, whither it was followed by the Persians. It was here 
that Themistocles, by his prudence, rendered abortive the ruinous 
design of the Spartan admiral, Eurybiades, of separating himself with 
the Pelopennesian fleet and deciding the battle in the Corinthian 
gulf, by craftily provoking the Persian king to a sudden attack in the 
narrow channel, where the enemy's fleet was embarrassed by its own 
magnitude. Thus originated the sea-fight of Salamis, in 
which the Greeks obtained a complete victory. Xerxes 
gazed in despair from a neighbouring eminence on the destruction of 
his fleet, and then commenced a hasty retreat with a portion of his 
army through Thessaly, Macedon, and Thrace, during which he lost 
some thousands of his soldiers from cold, hunger, and fatigue. 

§ 55. Xerxes on his retreat left 300,000 of his best troops behind 
him in Thessaly. These marched again into Attica in the following 
spring, and compelled the Athenians, who had returned home, once 
more to disperse themselves. But the Greeks, under the conduct of 
the Spartan Pausanias, lieutenant of the Athenian general, Aristides, 
obtained so signal a victory in the great battle of Platsea, over a force 
of three times their number, that only 40,000 of the Persians saved 
themselves across the Hellespont. The remainder, with their leader, 
were slain, either in battle, in the storming of their camp, or in the 
flight. The booty was enormous. On the same day, the Persians 
suffered a decisive defeat at the promontory of Mycale, in Asia 
Minor, from the Greeks on board the fleet. In this case also a 
Spartan was the leader, but it was the Athenians and Milesians who 
bore off the prize of valour. The fleet and camp of the enemy were 
taken and destroyed. The slaughter among the broken and flying 
crowd was frightful. Valour triumphed over strength, and the truth, 
that patriotism and love of freedom can bear away the victory 
from superior numbers, received a splendid confirmation in the 
glorious triumph of the Greeks over the Persians. Ten years after- 



44 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

wards, the double victory of Cimon on the river Euryme- 
don, over the fleet and army of the Persians, brought the 

war to a temporary conclusion. The peace of Cimon freed the whole 

of the Greek cities from the Persian yoke. 

THE SUPREMACY OE ATHENS, AND THE AGE OE PERICLES. 

§ 56. After the battle of Plataea, the war was principally carried 
on at sea. As the Spartans possessed but few ships, the command 
had gradually fallen into the hands of the Athenians, who, moreover, 
during the whole war had displayed the greatest courage and mag- 
nanimity. The supremacy of the Athenians was also forwarded by 
the treachery of the Spartan general Pausanias. Pausanias, at the 
taking of Byzantium, had made prisoners of some illustrious Persians. 
He sent these without any ransom to Xerxes, with the message, that 
" He would assist him in subduing the Greeks, if Xerxes would give 
him his daughter in marriage, and make him governor of Pelopon- 
nesus." When the Persian king acceded to these terms, the vain 
and ambitious man became so insolent, as entirely to neglect the 
Spartan laws and manner of living ; he clothed himself in costly 
garments, maintained a luxurious table, and was waited on and 
accompanied by a band of Persian guards. At the same time, lie 
rendered the Lacedaemonian ride universally odious by his imperious 
behaviour. The Spartans when made acquainted with this conduct, 
recalled their faithless general ; but their authority in maritime affairs 
was already so much weakened, that they voluntarily renounced the 
command. Pausanias, even in Sparta, kept up a private correspond- 
ence with the king of Persia. But this treachery being exposed by 
means of a slave, he perished of hunger in a temple in which he had 
taken refuge. 

§ 57. Whilst Pausanias was thus weakening the power of his 
native city, the three Athenian generals, by their various capacities 
and talents were instrumental in raising that of their own. 
Themistocles, by dint of wisdom and cunning, succeeded in get- 
ting Athens surrounded by a strong wall, and in founding the 
admirable harbour of Piraeus, which Cimon and Pericles afterwards 
connected with Athens, by means of a long double wall. By this 
undertaking, Themistocles incurred the implacable hate of the Spar- 
tans, who were very averse to the fortification of Athens, and who for 
this reason attempted at a later period to implicate him in the 
treachery of Pausanias. This happened at a time, when his enemies 
in Athens had succeeded in getting the ambitious man 
banished by ostracism, for a term of ten years. Perse- 
secuted in this way, the great general fled in the midst of innumer- 
able dangers to Asia, where he was honourably received by the 
Persian king, and had the revenues of three cities of Asia Minor 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 45 

allotted to him for his support. But when the king wanted his 
assistance in the subjection of Greece, he is said to have swallowed 
poison, rather than prove -a traitor to his country. 

As Themistocles by prudence, so Aristides by justice, aided the 
interests of his native city. The perfect confidence that was placed 
in his character and opinions, induced the islands and maritime cities 
to enter into alliance with the Athenians, and to pledge themselves 
to a supply of ships and money for the continuation of the war. The 
treasury of the confederacy, which was established in Delos for this 
purpose, was entrusted to the management of Aristides, and the 
command of the united fleet was also given to an Athenian. The 
supply of ships soon became burdensome to the smaller states, and 
they were glad to compromise for their delivery, by the payment of 
an additional sum of money. This gave the Athenians the oppor- 
tunity they so much wished for, of increasing their fleet, of subjecting 
the smaller maritime states, and treating them as tributary vassals. 
Aristides died so poor, that the state was obliged to defray the 
expenses of his burial, and to provide for the establishing of his 
children. 

§ 58. Cimon, the son of Miltiades, and Pericles, were not less 
instrumental in the aggrandizement of Athens. The first rendered 
many services to his country by successful expeditions at sea, and 
gained the people by his affability and generosity. He enlarged the 
territory of Athens, and employed his vast wealth in the embellish- 
ment of the city, where he established the beautiful gardens called 
the Academy. 

During his time Sparta was visited by a fearful earthquake. The 
greatest part of the principal city was destroyed, and to increase the 
calamity, the helots and Messenians seized their arms 
for the purpose of regaining their freedom. In their 
distress the Spartans turned to Athens for assistance, and by the 
influence of Cimon, an army was dispatched to their aid. But the 
suspicious Spartans sent it back again, a proceeding which so offended 
the Athenians, that they banished Cimon by the ostracism ; and when 
the Messenians, after a contest of ten years, were compelled to 
surrender their citadel, IthSme, they gave up the sea-port town, 
Naupactus, to them for a residence. Cimon died, much respected, in 
Cyprus, B.C. 449. 

Pericles, a soldier and statesman, distinguished by great talents, 
cultivation, and eloquence, exercised during his life such an influence 
on the state and people of Athens, that the years of his rule were 
distinguished as "the age of Pericles." This period includes the time 
when Athens had attained its highest point of refinement within, and 
possessed the greatest power abroad. Pericles adorned Athens by 
the erection of temples and magnificent buildings ; he encouraged 



46 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

the ai'ts and sciences, he invited men of genius, and in particular the 
great artist, Phidias, to his hospitable court. He gave to every one 
the means and opportunity of educating and distinguishing himself, 
and produced by these means a taste for art, literature, and poetry, 
even among the lowest classes of the people. Though descended 
from a rich and illustrious family, he was nevertheless a man of the 
people, and devoted to democratic principles. He passed a law, by 
which every Athenian citizen who sat in judgment, or was present at an 
assembly of the people, or served in the fleet or army, was entitled to 
a stipend. He distributed large alms to the necessitous, he instituted 
magnificent festivals, plays, and processions, for the gratification of 
the sight-loving people. By his exertions, the Athenian state attained 
such an exalted state of cultivation, that the citizens were almost all 
equally well fitted to fill offices or discharge business ; so that the regu- 
lation, that the greater part of the public offices should be filled by 
lot, was attended with less inconvenience at Athens, than such arrange- 
ment would have produced at any other place. At the same time, 
Athens, by means of Pericles, attained the greatest renown abroad. 
Her ships rided over the iEgean Sea, and compelled the islanders to 
pay tribute, by which means enormous sums of money flowed into 
her treasury. The statue of Minerva was covered with a robe of 
solid gold ; the Athenian armies engaged in successful 
conflicts with the Thebans and Spartans, till the unfor- 
tunate battle of Chseronea put an end to their military glory. After 
this engagement, in which the Athenians were either killed or taken 
prisoners, Pericles was obliged to save Athens from the destruction 
by which it was threatened, by concluding the peace named after him, 
"the peace of Pericles." 

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAE, B.C. 431 — 404. 

§ 59. The peace of Pericles was of short duration. The prosperity 
of the Athenians filled the Spartans with envy and malevolence ; and 
the insolence and severity with which they treated their subjected 
allies, more particularly the inhabitants of iEgina, who had only sub- 
mitted after a long struggle, excited hatred and disgust. In a short 
time, two armed and hostfle powers stood opposed to each other : the 
Athenian confederation, which included most of the islands and mari- 
time towns, and which was favoured by the democratic party in all the 
states, and the chief strength of which laid in its fleet ; and the Pelo- 
ponnesian alliance, with Sparta at its head, to which the Doric and 
the greater part of the iEohan states (Bceotia and others) attached 
themselves, and which reposed its confidence on a gallant army. The 
Spartans declined for a long time to commence hostilities. But when 
the Corinthians complained that Athens had violated the peace by 
assisting the island of Corcyra in its war against the mother country, 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 47 

Corinth, and had laid siege to the Corinthian colony, Potidsea, in 
Macedon, the Peloponnesian war, which for a period of twenty-seven 
years ravaged Greece in the most frightful manner, at length broke 
out. 

§ 60. As soon as war was declared, a Spartan army marched into 
Attica, and devastated the country. Upon this Pericles summoned 
the inhabitants of the country into the town, fitted out a fleet, and, 
landing on the coast of Peloponnesus, commenced reprisals. These 
were continued for some time, till at length a plague 
broke out in Athens, in consequence of the overcrowded 
state of the city, swept away many thousands of the inhabitants, and 
finally carried Pericles himself to the grave, after he had witnessed 
the death of his three sons. The death of this great man was a 
heavy loss to Athens : for now a crowd of selfish demagogues, and 
among them, Cleon, a tanner, obtained great influence, seduced the 
people by flattery, and strove to prolong the war. "Weakened by 
their own divisions, the Athenians were compelled to look on, whilst 
the Platseans, their most faithful allies, were subdued after an heroic 
struggle, by the Lacedsemonians and Boeotians : Plateea itself was 
levelled with the earth, the citizens who were capable of bearing arms 
put to the sword, and their wives and children led into slavery. 

The Athenian general, Demosthenes, shortly after 
succeeded in gaining possession of the Messenian town 
of Pylos, from whence he harassed the Spartan territories with 
devastating inroads. It was in vain that the Spartans endeavoured 
to drive him from his position, their attacks were repulsed, and more 
than four hundred heavy-armed Spartan troops shut up in the barren 
island of Sphacteria, where they were reduced to great extremities. 
They only obtained the means of subsistence by the desperate land- 
ing effected by some helots, to whom the Spartans had promised 
freedom if they were successful in the attempt. At last, to escape 
starvation, they were compelled to surrender themselves to Cleon, 
who had arrived with reinforcements. This success inflamed the 
insolence of the democratic leader. He fancied himself a hero, and 
obtained the command of an army that was intended to subdue the 
Spartan general, Brasidas, in Thrace. But Cleon suffered a defeat 
before the city of Amphipolis, and was afterwards killed in the flight; 
whereupon the opposite party gained the upper hand in 
Athens, and concluded the peace of Nicias. In the 
mean time, a desperate struggle was going on between the aristo- 
cratic and democratic factions, in the greater number of the Greek 
cities ; but no where was the strife more sanguinary than in the island 
of Corcyra, where the most illustrious families were completely 
destroyed. By the help of the Athenians, the democrats got their 
adversaries in their power, shut them up in a building, and killed 



48 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

them by casting down stones upon their heads. "Where the Spartans 
gained the upper hand, the aristocratic party became predominant, 
and punished their enemies by death and banishment ; if the Athen- 
ians prevailed, the democrats assumed the direction of affairs, and 
treated their opponents with similar severity. 

§ 61. The conclusion of peace separated the Spai'tans and Corinth- 
ians. The latter, in consequence, united themselves with Argos, Elis, 
and other cities of Arcadia, for the purpose of depriving the Spartans 
of their superiority (hegemonie) in Peloponnesus. In this attempt 
they received the assistance of Alcibiades, who was then in his 
twentieth year, and sister's son to Pericles, and who here displayed 
for the first time his address and powers of persuasion. Alcibiades 
w r as endowed with the greatest advantages both of mind and person. 
He was rich, handsome, accomplished, and a most admirable orator ; 
so that he was exactly fitted to supply the place of Pericles, had he 
only possessed more stability and prudence. The war, which the 
Spartans now had to sustain with the Corinthians and allies, would 

have been fatal to their authority, had not fortune declared 
b c 418 . . 

for the Lacedaemonian arms in the battle of Mantinaea. 

§ 62. Not long afterwards, the Athenians dispatched the finest 
fleet and the most admirable army that had ever sailed 
from the Piraeus, to Sicily, under the command of Alcibiades, 
Nicias, and Lamachus, for the purpose of attacking the Dorian city, 
Syracuse. This undertaking faded. Alcibiades, during his absence, 
was accused by his enemies of many crimes against religion and the 
government, and was in consequence hastily recalled by the Athenian 
magistrates. Thirsting for vengeance, he fled to Sparta, and endea- 
voured to stir up that state to make war upon Athens. The brave 
Lamachus fell in the siege of Syracuse ; the Athenian fleet was 
destroyed in the harbour; and when Nicias attempted to escape by 
land with the remains of the army to a friendly city, he was attacked 
during a night march, and after a bloody fight taken prisoner with 
the whole of his troops. Those who did not fall in the engagement, 
were employed as slaves in the stone quarries. The valiant generals, 
Nicias and Demosthenes, died in the market-place by the hands of 
the executioner. 

§ 63. Dark reports conveyed to Athens the first news of this 
dreadful blow ; when the frightful intelligence was confirmed, there 
was scarcely a family that had not occasion to mourn. The Athenian 
allies fell off and joined the Lacedaemonians ; the Spartans renewed 
the war by sea and land, and were assisted by the Persian governor 
of Asia Minor. Within the city, the aristocratic party were attempt- 
ing to overturn the constitution, and entered secretly into a traitorous 
alliance with the Spartans. Athens nevertheless defended herself for 
eight years against the superior force of the enemy, and was victor in 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 49 

two important engagements at sea. But no exertions could restore 
the crippled state to its former greatness. It was in vain that the 
Athenians recalled Alcibiades, gave him the command of the fleet 
and army, and cast the column on which his crimes were inscribed 
into the sea, — even he could not bring back its ancient glories to the 
Athenian navy. A few months after he had entered Athens amidst 
the exulting shouts of the popidace, he was again deprived of his 
command, because his lieutenant in his absence had lost the sea-fight 
of Ephesus. 

§ 64. About this time the Spartans gained an excellent leader in 
the artful and adventurous Lysander, who obtained the favour of 
the new governor of Asia Minor, Cyrus the younger, for the purpose 
of increasing the Lacedaemonian fleet by the assistance of the Per- 
sians. This Lysander took advantage of the carelessness of the 
Athenian commanders, who had suffered their men to go on shore, 
by making an unexpected attack upon their ships at the 
Goat's River (iEgos-potamos) , on the Hellespont, and cap- 
turing the whole of them, except nine. The power of Athens was now 
vanished. After Lysander had reduced to submission the islands and 
towns that were friendly to the Athenians, he blockaded 
Athens itself by land and sea, and the overcrowded city 
was soon reduced by hunger to surrender. The long walls and 
fortifications were pulled down to the sound of flutes ; the ships, with 
the exception of twelve, delivered to the Spartans, and all fugitives 
and outlaws recalled. Lysander then annulled the democratic con- 
stitution, and placed the government in the hands of thirty illustrious 
Athenians, who were the allies of Sparta. These aristocrats, dis- 
tinguished by the name of Thirty Tyrants, with the clever but violent 
Critias at their head, breathed nothing but death and banishment 
against the democratic party. But this reign of terror was but of 
short duration. Thrasybulus, a patriotic man, collected around him 
the fugitives and those who had been banished, and marched upon 
Athens. Critias was slain in battle ; the rest fell by treachery into 
the hands of the conqueror, who put them to death, re-established 
the democratic constitution, and by the assurance that the past 
should be forgotten and forgiven, succeeded in again restoring tran- 
quillity and order. 

4. SOCEATES. 

§ 65. During the Peloponnesian war, the morals of the Athenians 
had deteriorated, and honesty and civil virtue came to be less 
esteemed than wit and intelligence. This state of things was in 
a great degree brought about by the sophists, — false teachers, who 
paraded a factitious kind of wisdom founded upon fallacies and 
sophisms, and who presumed by oratorical arts and tricks of disputa- 



50 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

tion, to put lies in the place of truth, and to convert truth into error. 
They enticed to themselves wealthy young men, and instructed them 
in these arts for great rewards, by which means domestic and public 
life were poisoned in their very sources. At this juncture arose 
Socrates, an Athenian citizen, unmasked these sophistical mounte- 
banks, and awakened the sentiments of religion, justice, and virtue, 
in the bosoms of his pupils. Socrates taught his practical philosophy, 
the end of which was, "Know thyself;" not in elaborate discourses 
from the lecturer's chair, but by questions and answers in the public 
streets, under the open sky, or in the workshops of mechanics. The 
sophists were reduced to silence by his clear intellect, his simple and 
upright life, and his moral worth; wlnlst the richest and most 
talented young men united themselves to him. This exasperated the 
vain and greedy sophists, and they accused him of seducing the 
youth, and introducing false gods. Socrates, in a simple defence, 
disproved before the judges the truth of this accusation. But instead, 
as was then the custom, of imploring his acquittal with prayers and 
lamentations, he concluded his discourse by asserting that he was 
entitled to be received into the number of those illustrious men who, 
on account of their services to the commonwealth, were maintained 
at the public expense. This offended the judges, and Socrates was 
condemned to death by a small majority. It was in vain that his 
friends, particularly the rich citizen Crito, persuaded him to fly ; he 
rejected their counsels, and in the midst of elevating discourses on 
the immortal nature of the soul, (Plato's Phsedo) he drank the cup 
of poison, and died with the cheerfulness and composure of mind of a 
phdosopher. He has left nothing in writing : but his illustrious dis- 
ciple, Plato, has placed his own philosophy in the mouth of Socrates. 
This Plato was so distinguished as a writer and thinker that he was 
named the " Divine," as well on account of his splendid and exalted 
ideas and poetical images, as the perfect art of representation which 
is displayed by his works, written in the form of dialogues. Next to 
him, Xenophon the Athenian, at once a soldier and a writer, was the 
most distinguished of the disciples of Socrates. He has made the 
world acquainted with the life and doctrines of his master, in several 
philosophical pieces, entitled " Memorabilia of Socrates." 

5. THE EETKEAT OE THE TEN THOUSAND. B.C. 400. 

§ 66. Xenophon's most admirable historical work, is the "Ana- 
basis," or the description of the campaign of the younger Cyrus in 
Persia, and of the retreat of the Greek troops under the command of 
Xenophon himself. After its contest with Greece, the Persian em- 
pire had grown gradually weaker. The governors rided the provinces 
in an arbitrary manner, and excited insurrections by their oppression. 
The court was swayed by selfish and effeminate men and intriguing 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 51 

women, who practised the most frightful crimes, gave themselves up 
to every lust and excess, and perplexed the affairs of the kingdom by 
their contests for the crown. It was under these circumstances, that 
the younger Cyrus, governor of Asia Minor, entertained the project 
of depriving his elder brother, Artaxerxes, of the crown. He assem- 
bled a considerable army of mercenaries, the flower of which was 
composed of Spartan and other Greek troops, and marched with them 
into Persia. A battle was fought in the plain of Cunaxa, a few miles 
from Babylon, in which the Greeks indeed proved victorious, but 
Cyrus fell by the hand of his brother. The Greeks were summoned 
to surrender, and when they refused, the Persians invited Clearchus 
and the other captains to an interview, in which they were treacher- 
ously murdered. The Athenian, Xenophon, then placed himself at the 
head of the helpless host, and led them under the most incredible 
hardships through Armenia to the Black Sea, and from thence to 
Byzantium. Without any knowledge of the land or of the language, 
without guides on whom they could depend, they were compelled to 
climb pathless mountains, to wade through rivers, to march through 
inhospitable and snow-covered deserts, pursued by the Persians, and 
attacked by the inhabitants. When they caught the first glimpse of 
the Black Sea from an eminence, they fell upon then knees and 
saluted it with a shout of joy as the termination of their miseries. 

6. THE TIME OE AGESILAUS AND EPAMLTSTONDAS. 

§ 67. Sparta, by the Peloponnesian war, had become the first 
power in Greece. She abused her authority however, by tyrannizing 
over the other states, and by this means brought upon herself the 
hatred of her allies, in the same way that Athens had formerly done. 
Her inhabitants had long degenerated from the simplicity and severity 
of manners enjoined by Lycurgus. Foreign wars had brought riches, 
these produced avarice and love of pleasure, and from these again 
proceeded a host of vices. Kings and generals suffered themselves to 
be bought by sums of money, and disgraced themselves by corruption. 
A few families acquired enormous wealth and possessions, and plunged 
into luxury and intemperance, whilst the poorer classes starved. 
Even the powerful king, Agesilaus, a strenuous advocate for the old 
Spartan virtue and simplicity, was unable to restrain these vices. 

The other states had also long equally degenerated from the virtues 
and patriotism of an earlier period. Their citizens disaccustomed 
themselves from the use of arms, and relinquished the practice of 
war to hired mercenaries ; and when king Agesilaus declared war 
against the crumbling empire of Persia, and penetrated with his 
victorious banners into Asia Minor, the Athenians, Corinthians, 
Boeotians, and some others, were so forgetful of their honour and 
national feelings, that they suffered themselves to be persuaded by 

E 2 



52 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

the Persian monarch to take the field against Sparta ; so that Agesi- 
laus was compelled to retreat, and to turn his arms in the so-called 
Corinthian war against the Greeks themselves. Disunion, enerva- 
tion, and jealousy, at length produced such an indifference to national 
honour, that the Greek states rivalled each other to secure the favour 
of Persia, and consented to the shameful peace of Antal- 
cidas, hy which the west coast of Asia Minor was given 
up to the Persians, and in consequence lost for ever to liberty and 
Greece. 

§ 68. The peace of Antalcidas contained the farther condition, that 
all the Grecian states should be free. The Spartans, who were 
appointed the guardians and executors of the treaty, took this oppor- 
tunity to dissolve all alliances between the states, and to increase 
their own power. But their arrogance was soon punished. The 
Greek town Olynthus, in Macedonia, had united several neighbouring 
cities in a confederation, over Avhich, as the principal city, it exercised 
authority. The Spartans objected to this, as contrary to the con- 
ditions of the peace of Antalcidas, and on the Olynthians refusing to 
dissolve the confederacy, marched an army into the country, besieged 
then' town, and compelled them to submission. During the march 
through Boeotia, the Spartan general allowed himself to be persuaded 
by the aristocratic party in Thebes, to invest the town and overturn 
the democratic constitution. The undertaking was successful. The 
chiefs of the popular party were either executed, banished, or im- 
prisoned, the aristocrats seized upon the government, and confident 
of the support of the Spartans, ruled with insolence and violence. 

§ GO. But the hour of retribution was approaching. The banished 
democrats united themselves in Athens, from whence they commenced 
a correspondence with then' friends in Thebes. At their instigation 
they in a short time returned in secret in the disguise of clowns, 
assembled themselves in the house of one of the party, and issuing 
forth at midnight fell upon the aristocrats who were collected 
together at a luxurious repast. After these had been dispatched, 
they summoned the citizens to liberty, re-established the democratical 
government, and forced the Spartan garrison to retreat from the 
citadel. This occasioned a war between the Thebans and Lacede- 
monians. The commonwealth of Thebes was at that time conducted 
by two men, who joined patriotism and virtue to courage and military 
talents, and who were united together by the bonds of friendship, — 
Epaminondas and Pelopidas. They united their efforts in the 
attempt to elevate their country. Epaminondas introduced a new 
system of tactics, "the oblique order of battle," and Pelopidas 
was the originator of the sacred band, which, composed of a 
number of youths united together by friendship, and inspired 
by a love of honour and freedom, olfered a successful resist- 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 53 

ance to the Spartans. At first the Athenians sided with the Thebans, 
and by means of their generals, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus, 
did much mischief to the Lacedaemonians, both by sea and land. But 
when Thebes subjected the lesser cities of Bceotia to its authority, 
and destroyed Plataea, a town that was on friendly terms with 
Athens, the old jealousy again awoke, Athens concluded a peace with 
Sparta, and when the Thebans refused to accede to its conditions, 
the Lacedaemonian troops again marched into their terri- 
tory, but suffered so terrible a defeat from Epaminondas 
and Pelopidas, in the battle of Leuctra, that Sparta never recovered 
from its effects. For the first time the Lacedaemonian troops fled 
from the field of battle, so that the old Spartan law, which declared 
fugitives to be infamous, could not be put in force. 

§ 70. Epaminondas shortly after marched into Peloponnesus, and 
approached the unwalled capital of Laconia, that for five centuries 
had never seen an enemy in its neighbourhood. But the preparations 
for defence made by the old king, Agesilaus, and the determined 
attitude assumed by the Spartans, whose wives and children prepared 
to aid in the struggle, preserved it from attack. But Epaminondas 
expiated an old act of injustice. He called the Messenians to liberty, 
and restored to the exiles who returned from abroad, the land of 
their fathers, with the newly-built town of Messene. Some years 
later, Epaminondas again appeared in Peloponnesus. The Spartans 

and their allies under the command of Ao;esilaus pre- 
b.c. 362. 

sented themselves and fought with him the battle of Man- 

tinaea. In this battle the Thebans indeed proved victorious, but 
conquest was dearly bought by the death of Epaminondas. A javelin 
had pierced his breast, but it was not till he heard that the enemy 
were defeated, that he allowed the weapon to be withdrawn, and 
breathed forth his heroic spirit. Two years before, the brave Pelo- 
pidas lost his life in Thessaly, and in the following year, at the age of 
eighty, died Agesilaus, after witnessing Sparta's highest glory and 
her deepest fall. Epaminondas was magnanimous, experienced in 
war, and as just, unselfish, and poor as Aristides himself ; the lofti- 
ness of his aims, and the sense of his own personal worth, elevated 
him above avarice and the pursuit of pleasure, and the single cloak 
which he possessed was a greater ornament to him than any wealth 
could have been. His death was followed by a general flagging in the 
energies of the Greeks. 

7. THE MOST FLOURISHING PERIOD OE GREECE IN LITERATURE 
AND THE ARTS. 

§ 71. Whilst the Greeks were destroying their own power and 
disturbing the public tranquillity by their internal contests, literature 
and the plastic arts attained their highest perfection. Dramatic 



54 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

poetry, that in its origin had been connected with the festivals of the 
wine-god, Dionysius, "was raised to a wonderful height by the three 
great poets, Sophocles, Euripides, and iEschylus. The lives of these 
three men, who were the perfecters of the serious drama (tragedy), may 
be connected with the battle of Salamis, since iEschylus, who was 
then in his forty-fifth year, fought in the ranks of the combatants ; 
Sophocles, at fifteen, took a part in the chorus of youths in the fes- 
tival held after the battle for the celebration of the victory, and 
Euripides was born on the clay of the engagement. In the seven 
pieces of iEschylus, (the Prometheus vinctus, Persae, Agamemnon, 
&c.,) we may recognize the great period of the Persian war, when 
the souls of the Greeks were inspired by a noble enthusiasm for 
freedom and their fatherland. His compositions, which breathe a 
reverence for the gods, a respect for ancient institutions, and the 
self-consciousness of a lofty mind, are occasionally rendered obscure 
by the bold flight of the ideas, and the solemn energy of the lan- 
guage. 

In the tragedies of Sophocles, of which also seven are preserved 
(Antigone, CEdipus, Electra, &c), we see the age of Pericles, with its 
cultivation aud intellectual sociality ; and hence these compositions 
remain unapproachable models of beauty and harmonious perfection 
of style. Euripides, of whom we possess nineteen pieces (Medea, 
Hecuba, Iphigenia, &c), belongs to a less energetic period. He 
prefers to linger amidst scenes of justice, in which the Athenians 
took especial delight ; he makes abundant use of the artfully-con- 
structed speeches, sentences and common-places then in vogue 
among philosophers, and seeks to affect his auditors by scenes of 
sorrow and distress. He replaces the creative power and genuine 
feeling of his predecessors, by sensibility, and elegant and polished 
language. Euripides' cotemporary, Aristophanes, brought comedy to 
perfection. His pieces, in which he contrasts the vices of his own 
age with the virtues of an earlier period, were often rendered more 
effective by living characters, who were introduced by name, and 
pourtrayed so accurately, that it was impossible to mistake them. 
Thus, in his "Progs," and in another of his pieces, he ridiculed 
Euripides and his flat and lachrymose tragedies ; in his " Clouds," 
he held up to derision the sophists (under the name of Socrates) who 
attempted to undermine the faith of the people ; and he was even bold 
enough to attack the powerful Cleon and the selfish demagogues, in 
his " Knights." 

The chorus, which was a feature peculiar to the Greek drama, 
uttered in unimpassioned and lyrical poetry, the sentiments and 
reflections of the audience upon what was going on upon the stage. 
The splendid theatres which were every where erected, and which 
were magnificent examples of architecture, contributed not a little to 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 55 

the elevation of the dramatic art. A rich citizen could find no better 
way to the favour of the people than exhibiting a dramatic perform- 
ance at his own expense. 

§ 72. It was at this same period that the prose literature of the 
Plato, b.c. Greeks rose to its highest point of cultivation. In the 
429—348. dialogues of Plato, (§65,) the lofty thoughts of a rich and 
creative mind are clothed in the finest language, and presented in the 
Herodotus most attractive form. Herodotus, of Halicarnassus, is 
b.c. 450. looked upon as the father of history. He described the 
contests of the Greeks and Persians in simple and copious language, 
but occasionally introduced portions of the earlier history of the 
oriental and Greek tribes, so that his account contains a great deal 
that is fabulous, which he copied from the narrations of the priests. 
During his extensive travels he made himself acquainted by personal 
observation with most of the countries of which he relates the 
history. His Avork is written for the people, and therefore its lan- 
guage is simple and cordial. He shows how the love of freedom, the 
discipline, and the moderation of the Greeks, bore off the victory 
from the servility, the disorderly masses, and the pomp of the Asiatics. 
Thucydides, The historical works of Herodotus kindled the emulation 
b.c. 430. of the patriotic Athenian, Thucydides. He had been 
banished at the time of the battle of Amphipolis, (§ 60,) and devoted 
the years of his absence to the composition of his " History of the 
Peloponnesian war." His " thought- weighted " language, and the 
profundity of his reflections, render this work unintelligible, except 
to the learned. The history of Thucydides ends with the twenty-first 
year of the Peloponnesian Avar. 

Xenophon, Xenophon, his continuator, takes up the historical 

b.c. 400. thread where Thucydides rehnquished it. He is distin- 
guished by the clearness, ease, and beauty of his style, but is far 
inferior to Thucydides in depth and historical accuracy. Although 
an Athenian, Xenophon respects and praises the Spartans, especially 
their king, Agesilaus, of whose life he had also written a description. 
Por this reason, his Greek history is composed with a conscious 
partiality ; the illustrious Thebans, Pelopidas and Epaminondas in 
particular, are thrown entirely into the shade. His history concludes 
with the battle of Mantinssa. Another work of Xenophon's, was a 
history of the elder Cyrus (Cyropaedia), a sort of romance, in which 
he displays the founder of the Persian empire as the model of a 
regent. 

§ 73. Rhetoric also about this time rose in Athens to its highest 
point of perfection. If eloquence had originally been a gift of 
nature, an inborn talent, it began, after the Peloponnesian war, to be 
treated as an art, and rules and -theories were established respecting 
it. Schools of oratory were opened, where the Athenian youth who 



53 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

■wished to devote themselves to public life or to the affairs of govern- 
ment or the law, received instruction. For in a democratic republic 
like Athens, he alone could hope to exert himself with success, who 
was capable of speaking well. Among the ten Athenian orators who 
B c have left written discourses behind them, Isocrates takes 

436—338. the first rank, both on account of the artistic skill and per- 
fection of style displayed by his discourses, and more particularly, from 
the great success of his oratorical school. The most renowned of the 
D th pupils of Isocrates, was Demosthenes, who from his youth 
b.c. upwards, kept his purpose so steadily before his eyes that 

385—322. k e exer ted incredible efforts to overcome his natural 
impediments, that he might render himself an orator. No one pos- 
sessed to an equal degree with himself the gift of exciting, enchaining, 
and inspiring his auditors. Animation of delivery, alternations from 
severity to ridicule, bitter outbursts, and happy turns of expression, 
all served him as weapons. The most remarkable of his productions 
are the twelve political orations against Philip of Macedon (Philippics), 
in which he endeavours to excite the Athenians to make war upon 
this enterprizing monarch, who was at that time meditating the sub- 
jection of Greece. The rival of Demosthenes was iEschines, an 
orator equal to himself, who sided with the king of Macedon and his 
party. When the Athenian senate awarded a golden crown to 
Demosthenes, iEschines attempted, in a brilliant speech, to procure a 
revocation of the vote by calling in question the merits of him to 
whom it had been presented. This gave Demosthenes the oppor- 
tunity of so overwhelming his opponent in his incomparable oration, 
" de Corona," that iEschines was sentenced to punishment, and 
experienced so much annoyance, that he betook himself to Bhodes, 
where he established a school of oratory. 

§ 74. The most flourishing period of the fine arts, under which 
term are included architecture, sculpture, and painting, was from the 
time of Pericles to the death of Alexander. The feeling for art that 
was inherent in the Greeks, was the chief cause of this perfection. 
Grecian architecture was particularly distinguished by symmetry and 
harmony, so that every budding formed a beautiful whole. The prin- 
cipal feature in a Greek edifice, are the pillars, which are divided into 
three orders by the differences in then capitals. The plain and 
massive Doric, the slender Ionic with its voluted capital, and the 
highly-decorated Corinthian. They were particularly employed in 
the entrances of the temples, and in halls and porticoes. The dwelling- 
houses of the ancients were small and insiguificant, so that their 
architectural skill could only be displayed in their public buddings, 
temples, theatres, senate-houses, monuments, &c. 

The art of sculpture was carried to its highest perfection by the 
Greeks, the master-pieces of antiquity that have been preserved to 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 57 

us are even now regarded* as unapproachable examples of beauty. 
Amongst the artists, the next in celebrity to Phidias, (§ 58,) 
are Scopas of Paros, Praxiteles of Athens, and Lysippus of 
Sicyon. Since the best way of showing respect to a celebrated or 
deserving man, in Greece, was to erect his statue or set up his bust 
or hermes (bust placed on a pedestal), artists every where found 
employment and encouragement. Every city made it a point of 
honour to possess a multitude of statues in its streets and public 
places. The splendid physical conformation of the Greeks which 
was disfigured by no ugly habiliments, and the opportunity afforded 
by the exercises of the gymnasium of seeing the naked figure in every 
variety of attitude, tended materially to the perfection of the art of 
sculpture. The statue of the Belvidere Apollo, the group of the 
Laocoon, and innumerable figures and works in bas-relief, afford 
splendid evidence of the high artistic capabilities of the Greeks. 

In painting, the names of Parrhasius, Zeuxis, and Apelles, are par- 
ticularly celebrated. "We possess no specimen of ancient pahiting 
except the figures on the Grecian vases of burnt earth, and a few 
pictures on the walls of old buildings. Music, dancing, and the his- 
trionic art were also cultivated by the Greeks with enthusiasm. 



III. THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 
1. PHILIP OP MACEDON, B.C. 361 336. 

§ 75. Northward from Greece lies the rude and mountainous tract 
of Macedonia, the inhabitants of which were not looked upon as 
belonging to the Hellenes, though they had adopted the military 
system and many institutions of the Greeks. They were a military 
race, delighting in war and the chase and in chivalrous exercises and 
entertainments. A year after the death of Epaminondas, Philip 
assumed the government of this people. He was a man who united 
the shrewdness and dexterity of a statesman, the talents of a general, 
and the generosity and magnanimity of a prince. He both loved and 
respected the cultivation and the artists and poets of Greece, but held 
fast, nevertheless, to the manners of his own people, and even shared 
the disposition to intemperance indulged in by his nobles. He pos- 
sessed a well-appointed and efficient army, which was rendered 
particularly formidable by a newly invented order of battle, called the 
phalanx. 

§ 76. Philip's great aim was the subjection of the disunited Greek 
states. The sacred war afforded him the wished for opportunity for 
this purpose. The Thebans wanted to reduce the neighbouring state, 
Phocis, under their own dominion, and had cited the inhabitants 
before the council of Amphictyons, on a charge of having taken pos- 
session of and brought into cultivation, some of the lands belonging 



58 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

to the temple of Delphi. The council inflicted a heavy fine upon the 
Phocians, and upon their refusing to pay it, they were placed under a 
ban, and the Thebans were directed to carry the punishment into 
execution. Upon this the Phocians took possession of the temple of 
Delphi, and employed the treasures deposited there in hiring an army 
of mercenaries, by whose assistance they succeeded in defending 
themselves for ten years against all the attacks of their enemies. 
The Thebans addressed themselves to Philip for assistance. Philip 
yielded to their request, first subjected the Thessalians, and then 
penetrated by the pass of Thermopylae into Phocis. After a gallant 
resistance, the Phocians were compelled to submit. They were 
thrust out of the council of the Amphictyons as a people accursed, 
and Philip was admitted in their place ; their cities were razed to the 
ground, some of the inhabitants quitted then country, others were 
carried into slavery, those that remained were compelled to pay tribute. 
§ 77. Previous to this, Philip had taken possession of the Greek 
colonial cities Amphipolis and Potidgea, in Macedonia, and had founded 
the strong town of Philippi in the neighbourhood of the former, in a 
region abounding in gold mines ; after this he had subjected the 
haughty city Olynthus, and punished it severely in its possessions 
and liberties. But it was only by the breaking out of a second 
sacred war that he was enabled to attain his object. The Locrians 
were now accused in the same way the Phocians had formerly been, 
of having appropriated and brought under cultivation a portion of 
the lands belonging to the temple of Delphi ; and for this crime they 
were visited with a heavy fine by the council of Amphictyons. As 
this fine was not paid, the Amphictyons, at the suggestion of the 
orator, vEschines, who in his capacity of Athenian deputy was present 
at their council, commuted the punishment of the Locrians. The 
Macedonian king, Philip, hastened thither with his army, subdued 
the Locrians, and laid siege quite unexpectedly to the importantly 
situated town of Elatea. This arbitrary proceeding roused the 
Athenians from their indifference, and induced them to give a hearing 
to the exhortations of Demosthenes. The orator himself arranged an 
alliance with the Thebans, and effected the equipment of a consider- 
able army. But these troops, collected together in haste, and placed 
under the command of incompetent leaders, were unable to sustain 
the shock of the Macedonian phalanx. Despite the valom of the 
sacred band of the Thebans, who fell to a man on the field, Philip 
gained the battle of Chseronea, which put an end for 
ever to the liberties of Greece. Demosthenes pronounced 
the funeral oration over the bodies of those who had fallen, and 
Isocrates, who was then nearly a hundred years old, put himself to 
death rather than survive the liberties of his country. Por the 
rest, Philip treated the Greeks with kindness and affability to aecus- 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 59 

torn them more readily to the Macedonian yoke. He cherished the 
purpose of attacking the crumbling empire of Persia at the head of 
the united states of Greece, and summoned an assembly of the 
whole nation at Corinth to make the necessary preparations. He 
was already named generalissimo of the forces with unlimited 
powers, and every state was directed to furnish him with its contin- 
gent of troops, when he was killed from motives of private ven- 
geance, by one of his body guard, at the nuptials of his daughter at 
Pella, in Macedonia. 

2. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

§ 78. After the death of Philip, the Macedonian throne was ascended 
by his son Alexander, at the age of twenty-one ; a high-spirited 
prince, and susceptible of all that is great and honourable. He was 
brought up and instructed in the culture of the Greeks, by Aristotle, 
the great philosopher, thinker, and inquirer, and in consequence, 
remained through his whole life a friend and admirer of the Grecian 
art and literature. As soon as Alexander had established himself 
upon the throne, he was acknowledged by the Greeks as the successor 
of his father in the office of generalissimo against the Persians. 
Before, however, he could vmdertake the campaign to Asia Minor, he 
had to sustain a severe encounter with some wild tribes who had 
made an irruption into Macedonia. A false report of his death was 
suddenly spread abroad in Greece, and filled the Greeks with the 
hope of again regaining their independence. The Thebans killed a 
part of the Macedonian garrison in their citadel, and the Athenians 
and Peloponnesians made preparations for war. But Alexander 
came upon them with- the rapidity of lightning, Thebes was taken, its 
walls and houses levelled with the ground, and the inhabitants 
reduced to slavery. Only the temple and the house of the poet 
Pindar were spared. The rest of the Greeks were terrified, and the 
victor, who soon repented of his severity, forgave them. 

§ 79. It was in the spring of the year 334 B.C., that Alexander 
commenced his expedition against the Persians with a small but 
valiant army, commanded by admirable officers, Clitus, Parmenio, 
Ptolemus, and Antigonus. The army arrived at the Hellespont by 
the same path that Xerxes had taken, but in the contrary direction. 
At the passage, Alexander was the first who sprang upon the Asiatic 
continent, where, upon the plain of Troy, he instituted solemn games 
and sacrifices in honour of the ancient heroes who had fallen there. 
Achilles was his model, for this reason he always carried the compo- 
sitions of Homer about with him. Shortly after, the battle at the 

stream G-ranlcus took place, where Alexander carried off 
b~c. 334. . 

the victory from the far superior force of the Persians. 

His courage and chivalrous spirit here plunged him into imminent 



60 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

hazard of his life, from which he was only rescued hy the timely 
assistance of his general, Clitus. The conquest of Asia Minor was 
the consequence of this victory. The Greek cities submitted them- 
selves voluntarily, and hailed with joyful enthusiasm the kingly hero 
who had sprung from their own race. In the city of G-ordium there 
existed a very ancient royal chariot, with a knot twisted in the most 
intricate manner, respecting which an oracle had declared, that who- 
ever should unfasten this knot should gain the empire of Asia. 
Alexander accomplished the prophecy by cutting the Gordian knot 
with his sword. After this he crossed by perilous marches the 
Cilician mountains, where he got a dangerous illness by bathing in 
the cold waters of the Cydnus, from which he was only restored by 
the skill of the Greek physician, Philippus, and his own confidence 
in human virtue. 

§ 80. Darius Codomannus himself now opposed him with a much 
stronger force, but suffered a complete overthrow in the battle of the 
Issus. This unfortunate king, who was worthy of a better fate, fled 
with the remains of his army into the interior of his dominions, 
whilst Alexander prepared to attack Phoenicia and Palestine, so as 
not to leave these lands unsubdued in his rear. The booty after the 
battle of the Issus was immense, and the number of the prisoners, 
amongst whom were the mother, wife, and daughter of Darius, who 
contrary to the customs of antiquity, were generously treated by the 
conqueror, not at all inferior. 

§ 81. Palestine and Phoenicia submitted without resistance, but 
Tyre, confident in the strength of its position, rejected the summons 
to surrender with defiance. Upon this Alexander undertook the 
celebrated siege of Tyre, which lasted seven months. He commanded 
a mole, with towers, to be erected from the main land to the island 
on which the city was built, and from this mole his soldiers attempted 
the conquest of the town by machines for casting stones and every 
means that art could supply, whilst his ships blockaded the place by 
sea. But the Tyrians defeated his attempts by ingenioiis methods of 
defence, and maintained a desperate resistance. For this, 
Tyre had to make a heavy expiation when it was at length 
taken. Those of the inhabitants who had not escaped or perished in 
the siege, were reduced to slavery, and the city itself was levelled to 
the ground. Por the purpose of directing the commerce of the 
world into a different channel, Alexander, after he had conquered 
Egypt, built Alexandria on an arm of the Nile, and this city soon 
became the central point of trade and civilization. Prom Egypt he 
marched to the widely renowned temple of Jupiter Ammon in the 
oasis of Sivah, where the pi^iests declared him to be the son of Jupiter, 
a distinction that gained him no little respect in the eyes of the 
superstitious orientals. 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 61 

§ 82. After Alexander had established a new government in Egypt, 
he marched against Darius, who in the mean time had collected a 
large army. He crossed the Euphrates and Tigris, and 
with, a force only the twentieth part of that of the enemy, 
he defeated the enormous host of the Persians which had been 
assembled together from all the East in the plains of Babylon, in the 
battle of Arbela and Gangemala. The conquest of Babylon, and the 
capture of the two ancient capitals, Susa and Persepolis, with an 
enormous treasure, were the fruits of this splendid victory. Darius 
fled from Ecbatana, the beautiful summer residence of the Persian 
kings, to the mountainous region of Bactria, where he received his 
death from the hand of his treacherous governor, Bessus. Alexander 
shed tears over the fate of his unfortunate rival, and caused his 
murderer, who had assumed the title of king, but who was soon over- 
come and taken prisoner by the Macedonians, to be crucified in con- 
formity with the Persian custom. 

§ 83. The enterprizing conqueror succeeded by dint of a daring 
march across the snow-covered Indian Caucasus, dining which his 
soldiers narrowly escaped perishing by hunger and fatigue, in making 
himself master of the mountain region to the south-east of the Cas- 
pian Sea, and rendering it approachable by the roads he caused to be 
constructed. His lofty spirit was not entirely absorbed by scenes of 
war and conquest, but could attend to the civilization of the savage 
inhabitants. Eour newly erected towns, named after him, Alexandria, 
became the centre of the caravan trade, and diffused the G-reek culti- 
vation among the farthest nations of the East. At the storming of a 
strong fortress he took prisoner the beautiful princess, Boxana, " the 
Pearl of the East," and made her his wife. 

§ 84. Although the Macedonians repeatedly expressed their dis- 
content at their leader's unbounded love of conquest, Alexander 
dievertheless proceeded onwards to subjugate the lands on the banks 
of the Indus. But the warlike inhabitants of northern India, urged 
on by their priests, offered him a far more vigorous resistance than 
the dastardly subjects of the Persian king. Alexander's life was 
exposed more than once to the greatest peril in the storming of their 
strongholds. The quarrels of the native princes facilitated the con- 
quest of the Land of the Eive Eivers (Punjaub) by the Macedonians. 
Some of them leagued themselves with Alexander against Porus, the 
most powerful of these princes on the farther side of the Hydaspes 
(Dschelum). The passage of this river in the face of the enemy, and 
the action that followed, in which the gallant Porus was wounded 
and taken prisoner, are among the greatest military achievements of 
antiquity. Two new cities, Buchepala (so named in honour of Alex- 
ander's charger, Bucephalus), and Nicsea (city of Victory), were to 
diffuse Grecian civilization among these lands also. Alexander con- 



Q2 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

turned his course by difficult marches, still farther eastward, to 
Hyphasis, and was already making preparations to add the rich lands 
of the Ganges to his dominions, when the murmurs of the Mace- 
donians became so loud that he was compelled, though with inward 
reluctance, to retreat. Twelve stone altars on the banks of the river 
mark the eastern termination of his conquests. After restoring their 
lands to Porus and the other Indian princes under Macedonian 
supremacy, he sailed down the Indus to discover another way of 
returning. 

This undertaking proved most fatal. In two months he lost three- 
fourths of his army in the frightful deserts of Gedrosia. The heroic 
warriors who had bidden defiance to sword and lance in so many 
battles, fell victims in the barren and waterless desert to want and 
fatigue, to the miseries of the climate, the fervid sun, the heated 
sand, and the nightly frosts. Alexander magnanimously shared all 
the dangers and difficulties with the meanest of his troops, and 
rewarded those who escaped with entertainments and presents ; by 
this means the feasting became as excessive as the previous want. 

§ 85. Upon his return, Alexander dismissed his veteran soldiers to 
their homes, after having laden them with presents ; inflicted punish- 
ments upon the faithless governors and officers who, during his 
absence, had committed acts of violence and oppression, and then 
devoted himself zealously to the plan of assimilating the conquered 
people with their victors, and uniting them together in one nation 
possessed of the arts and cultivation of Greece. He treated the 
Persians with kindness, for the purpose of attaching them to his 
person and his rule. He surrounded himself with a court after the 
fashion of their kings, assumed the royal habit and diadem, and em- 
ployed Persian guards and attendants. He encouraged marriages 
between his generals and soldiers and the maidens of the country, by 
presents, and he himself espoused one of the daughters of Darius* 
By this conduct Alexander offended the Macedonians and Greeks, 
who wished to rule over the conquered people. Already, during the 
Indian campaign, the soldiers had displayed their discontent and ill 
humour in dissatisfied murmurs. This induced Alexander to have 
Philotas, the playfellow of his youth, and who was now the head of 
the malcontents, stoned by the army, and to put to death his aged 
father, Parmenio, who had remained behind in Persia. 

Alexander had at first imitated the customs of the Persian monarchs 
for the purpose of conciliating the conquered people, but he soon 
began to take delight in this oriental magnificence. His court at 
Babylon, which he intended to make the seat of the government of 
his empire, shone with the highest splendour, riotous feasts and 
banquets crowded upon each other, and in the intoxication of sensual 
indulgence he committed deeds that afterwards cost him bitter 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 63 

repentance. Among these may be mentioned the murder of his 
deserving general, Clitus, who saved his life at the Granlcus, but who 
afterwards excited his anger by some sarcastic speeches as they were 
drinking. His heart was corrupted by flatterers, who thrust his honest 
and weU-meaning advisers from his side. The intemperate indulgence 
in strong wines undermined his health and brought him to an early 
grave. One of the last acts of the hero, was instituting magnificent 
funeral solemnities in honour of his prematurely departed friend, 
Hephaestion. His grief for this friend of his youth had not yet 
passed away, when an illness carried him to the grave in 
the midst of fresh schemes of conquest and before he had 
determined upon a successor. When he was asked to whom he left 
his kingdom, he is said to have replied, "To the worthiest." His 
dead body was brought from Babylon to Alexandria, and there 
interred. 



3. THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. 

a. Alexander's successors. 

§ 86. As Alexander left no heir behind him who was capable of 
assuming the government, — only a brother, who was imbecile, and 
two children who were minors, — his empire fell to pieces as rapidly 
as it had been constructed. After many fierce and bloody wars in 
which the house of Alexander was totally destroyed, his generals 
succeeded in grasping separate portions of his territories and erect- 
ing them into iu dependent kingdoms. At first Perdiccas, to whom 
Alexander had given his signet-ring, received the greatest respect, 

and took upon himself the office of regent. But when he 
b c. 321. • 

made war upon Ptolemy, the governor of Egypt, he was 

killed by his own soldiers, whereupon Antigonus assiuned the chief 

power. Antigonus made himself master of the treasury 
b.c 316. r . 

in Susa, and hired such a number of mercenary troops, 

that he was enabled to bid defiance to the rest of the generals, and 
compel them to acknowledge him as commander and regent of the 
empire. As he allowed it, however, to be pretty plainly seen that 
he aimed at nothing less than the sovereignty of the whole 
of the Alexandrian dominions, the other generals, Seleucus of 
Syria, Ptolemus of Egypt, and Cassander of Macedon, leagued them- 
selves together against him and his son Demetrius, who afterwards 
obtained the surname of Poliorcetes (Taker of Cities). Erom this 
originated a long contest, that was carried on at the same time both 
in Greece and Asia with various success, and which was only ter- 
minated by the great battle of Ipsus, in Asia Minor, where the hero 
Antigonus, who was then eighty years old, lost his life, and his son 
Demetrius was obliged to fly. After many partitions and inter- 



6i THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

changes, Alexander's empire (a few smaller states excepted) was 
finally divided into the three following kingdoms : — 
I. Macedonia and Greece. 
II. The Syrian empire of the Seleucidse. 
III. Egypt under the Ptolomies. 

b. &reece's last struggle, the achaian league. 

§ 87. From the time of the battle of Chaeronea, Greece had 

remained under the government or influence of the Macedonian 

kings, and all attempts made by individual states to shake off this 

yoke had proved ineffectual. Thus the attempt of the brave Spartan 

king, Agis II., who with 5000 of his fohWers died the 
b c 330 

death of heroes in the bloody field of Megalopolis, was 

productive of no resrdt. The contests between the aristocratic and 
democratic parties still continued in Athens during the Macedonian 
period. When the aristocrats, with the noble Phocion at their head, 
obtained the government by the aid of the Macedonians, many of the 
popular party, and among others, Demosthenes, the vehement op- 
poser of the royal house of Macedon, quitted the city. Threatened 
with being given up, the great orator fled to a Pelopon- 
nesian temple, where he destroyed himself by poison to 
save himself from falling into the hands of his enemies. Some years 
afterwards, the democrats again gained the upper hand, when they 
compelled Phocion in his turn to drink the cup of poison. Prom this 
time party violence diminished in Athens, but the love of freedom, 
patriotism, and civic virtue decayed with it. Effeminacy and the 
pursuit of pleasure choked the nobler feelings, and although the arts 
and sciences still continued to flourish, and Athens still remained the 
centre of civilization, the greatness of the people was gone for ever. 
The citizens disgraced themselves by servility and flattery, parti- 
cularly at the time when the two Demetrii, Phalereus and Poliorcetes, 
were resident in their city, and destroyed all morality by their sen- 
suality and debauchery. ^~ 

§ 88. About the middle of the third century, Greece made a final 
effort in the Achaian league, to which Aratus of Sicyon 
gave such power and consequence, especially after the 
strong city of Corinth had placed itself at the head of the confedera- 
tion, that he was enabled to attempt the supreme power over Pelo- 
ponnesus, and even over the whole of Greece. This excited the 
jealousy of Sparta, where just at that time two high-spirited kings, 
Agis III. and Cleomenes, were endeavouring to restore the ancient 
strength and military virtue. Eor since the Spartans had decided 
that one person might become the proprietor of numerous estates, the 
Avliole of the laud had gradually got into the possession of a few rich 
families, who governed the state by choosing the ephori from among 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 65 

themselves. The remainder of the citizens possessed neither rights 
nor property, and were in debt to the rich. The two kings sought to 
remedy these evils by abolishing the office of the ephori, by destroying 
the bonds of the debtors, and by re-establishing the laws and customs 
of Lycurgus. But Agis was dethroned and cruelly murdered by his 
enemies ; and Cleomenes, who by dint of resolution succeeded in 
carrying his objects in Sparta, and then endeavoured to compel the 
rest of the Peloponnesian states to acknowledge the Spartan supre- 
macy, was defeated in the battle of Sellasia in Arcadia, 
by the Achaian league supported by the Macedonians, 
and found himself compelled to fly to Alexandria ; where he and his 
faithful followers, after being baffled in attempting an insurrection, 
perished by their own daggers. In the same year in which Cleo- 
menes met with his death, Sparta was subdued by the valiant Philo- 
pcemen (who had been chosen head of the Achaian league after 
Aratus), and compelled a short time after to join the league and 
abolish entirely the laws of Lycurgus. Philopcemen afterwards fell 
into the hands of his enemies during a war with the Messenians, and 
was obliged to drink the cup of poison. After the death of this 
" last of the Greeks," the power of the Achaian league declined, so 
that the Romans were enabled to take possession of the whole country 
without any great effort. 

€. THE PTOLEMIES AND SELEUCID^l. 

§ 89. Seleucus and Ptolemus were the most fortunate of Alex- 
ander's successors. The former, after many wars which were attended 
with important results, succeeded in reducing all the countries 
between the Hellespont and the Indus, and founding the Syrian 
empire of the Seleucidee. He built the magnificent city of Antioch 
on the Orontes, and Seleucia on the Tigris. By means of these cities, 
and forty others, erected by himself and his successors, the Greek 
language and culture became more and more predominant in the 
East, and from this period, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, were the 
chief seats of civilization and commerce. But this condition of 
extreme refinement afforded little matter for rejoicing. The enormous 
wealth that flowed into these states produced luxury, effeminacy, and 
sensuality; indolence enervated the people, and produced a servile 
spirit, which displayed itself by the most abject adulation of oppres- 
sive rulers. Sanguinary crimes, the empire of women and favourites, 
universal reprobation and corruption of morals, are the prominent 
features in the history of the Seleucidae, of whom Antiochus III., 
surnamed the Great, is the best known, as well by his expedition into 
India, as from his unfortunate contest with the Romans. Under 
monarchs so weak and abandoned as these, it was no difficult matter 
for enterprising men to establish small independent states. The most 

E 



66 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

celebrated of these were the kingdom of Pergamus in Asia Minor, and 
that of the Parthians on the north-east of the Euphrates. 

The Egyptians under the Ptolemies were in a similar position. The 
three first kings established a large naval and military force, by means 
of which they enlarged their empire on all sides. Trade and com- 
merce produced wealth ; the science of government and taxation was 
brought to a high degree of perfection. Alexandria became the seat 
of the commerce of the world, and the centre of Greek art, literature, 
and civilization ; the world-renowned museum, with its extensive 
library and residences for poets and men of learning, was connected 
with the royal palace. But the men who were the producers of all 
this prosperity were, like the royal family itself, aliens — Greeks and 
Jews. The glory of the Ptolemaic dynasty was of short duration, 
for the civilization of Alexandria had no root among the people. It 
was an exotic plant that embellished the surface but left the soil un- 
changed. The court of Alexandria was not less distinguished by 
cruelty, debauchery, and corruption of morals, than by its splendour, 
wealth, and refinement. 

d. THE JEWS UNDER THE MACCABEES. 

§ 90. Judasa was for a long time an object of contention between 
the Seleucidse and the Ptolemies. The latter were the first to take 
possession of the land and to render it tributary; but they suffered the 
old institutions to remain, and allowed the high priest, with the 
council of seventy (Sanhedrim) , to manage the affairs of religion and 
the internal government. Many of the Jews settled in Alexandria 
where they acquired wealth and power, but gradually lost the 
language, manners, and religion of their own country, or mingled 
them with those of the Greeks. The translation of the 
Hebrew text of the Bible into Greek, which was executed 
at the instigation of the second of the Ptolemies, by seventy-two 
Alexandrian Jews (hence called the Septuagint), was afterwards 
extremely serviceable to the propagation of Christianity. 

Judsea was subjected to the Seleucidae by the Syrian king Antio- 
chus III. (the Great), and grievously oppressed with taxes. His 
second successor Antiochus Epiphanes plundered the temple in 
Jerusalem of its treasures, and even entertained the purpose of 
destroying the Jewish institutions and the worship of Jehovah, and 
substituting the Greek idolatry in its place. To this project the 
Jews offered an obstinate resistance, and by this means drew a severe 
persecution on themselves. When this persecution was carried 
beyond all endurable limits, the people rose in desperation against 
their oppressors, and under the command of the high priest, Matta- 
thias, and his five heroic sons (Maccabees), encountered 
the Syrians with courage and success. The eldest son, 



HISTORY OF GREECE. 67 

Judas Maccabaeus, enforced a peace, which granted the re-establish- 
ment of the Jewish worship. His brother Simon freed Judsea from 
the Syrian yoke, and reigned wisely and righteously as 
prince and high priest. Under his successors the limits 
of the kingdom were enlarged, and the Idumseans (Edomites) induced 
to accept the Jewish law. But internal dissensions, and the hatred 
of sects, soon again impaired the strength of the people. The Phari- 
sees, who held firmly to the prophets and the law of Moses, attributed 
great merit to the accurate observance of trifling precepts and out- 
ward ceremonies, and fell by this means into hypocrisy and false 
righteousness ; the Saclducees were less severe in their interpretation 
of the Mosaic laws, and attempted to bring them into accordance 
with the morals, doctrine, and way of thinking of the Greeks ; the 
Essenes lived together in brotherhoods, who had all their possessions 
in common, and served God by acts of penance and works of charity. 
The weakness produced by the mutual hostility of these sects, at 
length brought the Jewish race under the dominion of the Romans. 
The last of the Maccabees was slain by Herod the Idumsean, who 
thereupon ascended the throne of David by the assistance of the 
Romans, and ruled over Judaea as tributary king (Tetrarch). For 
the purpose of conciliating the Jews, who hated him as a foreigner, 
he enlarged and beautified the temple of Solomon ; but towards the 
end of his reign, suspicion caused him to degenerate into a blood- 
thirsty tyrant, who even attempted the life of that Jesus of Nazareth 
who was sent into the world to redeem the lost race of man. 

e. THE STATE OE CIVILIZATION DURING THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. 

§ 91. By the conquests of Alexander and his successors, the Gre- 
cian arts and refinements were diffused over the greatest part of the 
old world, and a high amount of civilization in consequence produced. 
The great increase of commerce and intercourse among all nations 
was favourable to the spread of this civilization. But the inward 
strength was weakened by the outward diffusion. Nothing worthy 
of notice was produced in poetry, except the Idyls, in 
which Theocritus the Sicilian describes a pastoral life full 
of innocence and simplicity, and a few dramatic compositions which 
are now lost. History and oratory were far behind the splendid 
examples of an earlier period. Learning, and the practical sciences, 
which are based on experience and inquiry, attained, on the other 
hand, to a great degree of perfection. Learned critics and gram- 
marians arranged and illustrated the works of the older Greek 
writers ; natural history and mathematics, geography and astronomy, 
of which the elements alone had previously existed, were now greatly 
Euclid advanced. Euclid, a contemporary of the first Ptolemy, 

b.c. 280. composed a text-book of geometry that was employed in 

e 2 



68 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Archimedes, education for centuries ; Archimedes of Syracuse gained 
b.c. 212. imperishable renown by bis discoveries in mechanical and 
physical science ; and the art of medicine, that had been first esta- 
blished on a scientific basis by Hippocrates, was considerably extended 
by the Alexandrian physicians. But philosophy was the subject that 
received the greatest attention. As Paganism in its corruption 
afforded no rest to the soul, and no support in life, men sought for 
refuge in the pursuit of wisdom. The precepts of the philosophers 
of an earlier period were expanded and applied to the regulation of 
life. In this way arose the schools of philosophy, some of which 
reposed on the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, and others were 
originated by the disciples of Socrates and other wise men. The 
Stoics and the Epicureans became the most distinguished of these 
philosophical sects. Socrates had especially taught, that happiness 
was the end of existence. His scholar Antisthenes, believed that the 
surest way of attaining this happiness was to renounce all pleasures, 
and taught that moderation, abstinence, and a freedom from wants, 
were the highest objects of human exertions. His dis- 
ciple Diogenes carried these doctrines to the greatest 
excess: he lived in a tub, deprived himself voluntarily of property and 
all the pleasures of life, and by this "heroism of abstinence," excited 
the admiration of the great Alexander. This school was called the 
Cynic, from the place in which Antisthenes taught ; and in allusion to 
this, Diogenes received the surname of kuon (hound), because the 
wretched and joyless life he led seemed fitter for a dog than a human 
bein°\ This doctrine in a more noble form constitutes the basis of 
the Stoic philosophy, which was taught by Zeno, a contem- 
porary of Alexander, in the porticoes (stoa) of Athens. 
According to his teaching, man only attains felicity by bearing with 
invincible indifference all the changes and chances of life, — joy and 
grief, misfortune or happiness : this is his duty the rather, that every 
thing is determined on beforehand by an eternal natural necessity or 
fate. In opposition to this view, another disciple of So- 
crates, Aristippus of Cyrene, maintained the enjoyment 
of life as his chief principle, and taught the art of wisely mingling 
together sensual and intellectual pleasures. This art of enjoyment 
was erected by one of his scholars, Epicurus, into a system that 
numbered many adherents. Whilst, however, Epicurus made hap- 
piness to consist in a freedom from all painful and distressing emo- 
tions, his followers overstepped the bounds of moderation, placed 
luxury and the gratification of the appetites as the ends of existence, 
and rendered Epicurism the philosophy of effeminacy and excess. 



HISTORY OF ROME. 69 

C. HISTOET OE EOME. 

THE KACES AND INSTITUTIONS OE ANCIENT ITALY. 

§ 92. The beautiful peninsula which is bounded on the north by 
the Alps, surrounded on the east, west, and south by the Mediter- 
ranean, and traversed throughout its whole length by the Apennines, 
was formerly inhabited by numerous races of men of different origin. 
Upper Italy, on either bank of the Po (Padus), was the dwelling- 
place of the Gallic race, who were divided into many tribes and 
states, and possessed numerous cities, both in the fertile plains and 
on the sea-coast. Central Italy was inhabited by many small tribes, 
a part of which had dwelt in the land from time immemorial, and 
might be looked upon as the aborigines of the country; whilst others 
had wandered thither from abroad. To the latter class belonged the 
remarkable family of the Etruscans, to the former the sturdy race of 
the Sabelli, who were again divided into numerous warlike and free- 
dom-loving tribes, among whom the Samnites, the Sabines, and the 
-ZEqui, were the most distinguished. The Latins, a powerful rustic 
tribe on the south of the Tiber, were a mixed race, composed of 
natives and immigrants, to which after the conquest of Troy a Trojan 
race, under the conduct of ^Eneas, is said to have united itself. The 
coast of Lower Italy was covered with Greek colonies ; the inland 
parts were the seat of warlike tribes of Sabelline origin, Samnites, 
Campanians, Lucani. Campania, with its vineyards and corn-fields, 
is one of the most beautiful and fertile spots on the globe, and was 
chosen accordingly by the Romans for the erection of their magni- 
ficent villas. Of all these races, that of the Etruscans is the most 
worthy of remark.. They formed a confederation of twelve independ- 
ent cities, of which Caere, Tarquinii, and Pelusium, in the neighbour- 
hood of the Trasimenian lake, Clusium, and Yen, are the best known. 
The separate cities were governed by an aristocratic priesthood. 
These nobles (Lucumos) elected the head of the confederation, the 
insignia of whose office were an ivory chair, a purple mantle, and 
axes inclosed in bundles of rods (fasces), such as were afterwards 
borne before the Roman consuls. The Etruscans were a religious 
people, and paid great observance to predictions derived from the 
sacrifice of animals (auspices), and the flight of birds (auguries). 
They were proficient in the art of founding, and in working earth 
and metals, and their skill in architecture is attested by the existing 
remains of gigantic walls, and the ruins of temples, dykes, roads, &c. 
The innumerable vessels of clay and cinerary urns (Etruscan vases), 
ornamented with paintings, which are dug out of the earth, are 
evidence of the diligence of the Etruscans in arts and manufactures. 
But the oppressive power of the aristocracy, which proved destruc- 
tive to the freedom and energy of the middle and lower classes, was 



70 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

the occasion of the early decay and extinction of the arts of culture 
among the people. The Sahines, Sanmites, and other tribes of Sabel- 
line origin, led a simple and temperate life in open or only slightly 
fortified towns. They loved the pastoral life, agriculture, and war, 
and looked upon their freedom as their greatest blessing. From time 
to time they celebrated a sacred spring, during which tbe newly-born 
cattle were offered in sacrifice, and the children who came into the 
world in the course of the year, left their country as colonists, on 
arriving at the age of twenty. 

The Latins dwelt in thirty cities, which were united together in a 
confederation, of Avhich Alba Longa was the head. Agriculture and 
civil freedom flourished among them ; their religion was founded 
upon the worship of nature, and bore a relation to the cultivation of 
the soil. The seed-god Saturn, and his spouse Ops (the abundance 
flowing from the earth), were among their deities. The venerable 
goddess Vesta, whose sacred and perpetual fire was watched by twelve 
virgins (Vestals), was also one of the native deities of the Latins. 
The representatives of the union held their meetings in a wood on 
the Albanian hill. 



I. ROME UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF KINGS AND PATRICIANS. 
I. EOME TJNDEE THE KINGS. 

§ 93. "We are told by an old legend, that king Munitor of Alba 
Longa, a successor of the Trojan ^Eneas, (§ 37,) was deprived of his 
crown by his brother Amulius, and his daughter Bhaea Silvia placed 
among the sacred virgins of Vesta, that she might remain unmarried 
and without offspring. But when she bore the twins Romulus and 
Beinus, to tbe god Mars, her cruel uncle commanded the children to 
be exposed on the banks of the Tiber, where however they were dis- 
covered and brought up by shepherds. Informed by an accident of 
the mystery of their birth and the fate of their grandfather, they 
restored the throne of Alba Longa to Munitor, and then 
founded Borne on the Palatine hill on the left bank of 
the Tiber. The rising walls of the city are said to have been 
stained by the blood of Bemus, who was slain in a quarrel, by his 
brother. 

Romulus, § 94. When the little town was built, Bomulus 

b.c. 730. attracted inhabitants, by declaring it a place of refuge 
for fugitives. But as the fugitives had no wives, and the neighbour- 
ing people hesitated to give them their daughters in marriage, 
Bomulus arranged some military games, and invited the neighbours 
as spectators. At a given signal, every Boman seized upon a Sabine 
virgin, and carried her off into the city. This outrage gave rise to a 
war between the Sabines and the new colony. The two armies were 



HISTORY OF ROME. 71 

already opposed to each other, when the abducted virgins rushed 
between the combatants, and put an end to the strife, by declaring 
that they would share the fate of the Eomans. A treaty was 
arranged, in consequence of which the Sabines, who dwelt on the 
Capitoline hill, agreed to vinite themselves in a single community 
with the Latins, who lived on the Palatine, and the Etruscans, who 
inhabited the Cselian hill : it was decided further, that tbe Sabine 
king, Titus Tatius, should share the government with Romulus ; and 
that a Latin and Sabine should be elected alternately from the senate 
to the office of king. Romulus disappeared from the earth in an 
unknown manner, and received divine honours under the name of 
Quirinus. His citizens from this time bore the name of Quirites 
conjointly with that of Romans. 

Numa § 95. The warlike Romulus was succeeded by the wise 

Pompilius, Sabine, Numa Pompihus, who reduced the rising state to 
order by his laws and religious institutions, and improved 
and civilized the inhabitants. He built temples, and established a 
form of religious worship, increased the number of priests, and 
made regulations respecting sacrifices and divinations. He dedicated 
a temple at the entrance of the forum to Janus Bifrons, the god who 
presides over the beginning of every thing both in time and space : 
the doors of this temple were open in time of war, and closed during 
peace. As the Greeks confirmed their laws by the means of 
oracles, so Numa maintained that he had derived his system of reli- 
gion from conversations with the nymph Egeria, who had a wood 
sacred to her on the south of Rome. 

b.c. 650. § 96. The two following kings, Tullus Hostilius the 

b.c. 625. Latin, and the ' Sabine Ancus Martius, enlarged the 
territory of the little state by successful wars ; so that four other 
hills were added to the three before-mentioned, and gradually supplied 
with inhabitants. Eor this reason Rome is called the seven-hilled 
city. Under Tullus Hostilius the Romans engaged in a war with 
Alba Longa. Just as the armies were about to engage, it was agreed 
to decide the fate of the two cities by a combat between three 
brothers, the Horatii and the Curiatii, chosen from each of the 
parties. Two of the champions of the Romans had already fallen, 
when the victory was decided in their favour by the cunning and 
bravery of the third, and the possession of Alba Longa fell at once 
into their hands. The city was destroyed, and the inhabitants trans- 
planted to Rome. The same fortune happened to many other cities 
in the neighbourhood, during the reign of Ancus Martius. The con- 
quered citizens settled in Rome, where they received houses and 
small estates, but were not admitted to the privileges of the elder 
citizens. The latter, from this time, were called "patricians," the new- 



72 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

comers bore tlie name of "plebeians." Ancns Martins founded the 
sea-port of Ostia, at tbe mouth of the Tiber. 

§ 97. The last three kings, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and 
Tarquinius Superbus, belonged to the Etruscan race, as is evident 
from the buildings they erected, and the Etruscan institutions they 
introduced into Rome. The elder Tarquin laid the foun- 
dation of the vast structure of the Capitol, which was 
completed by his son Tarquinius Superbus, in accordance with his 
father's design. It consisted of a citadel and a magnificent temple. 
He constructed, in addition, the enormous cloacse (sewers), budt of 
freestone, for the draining of the city, the circus maximus, and the 
forum. 

After the murder of Tarquin by the sons of his predecessor, his 
son-in-law Servius Tullius ascended the throne. He 

b c 550 

originated two measures that were followed by important 
consequences. First, he divided the plebeians in the city and its 
vicinity into thirty tribes, with their own overseers and assemblies ; 
he then divided the entire population of the state, according to their 
property, into five classes, and these again into hundreds, in order to 
facilitate the collection of imposts and the arrangement of military 
service. By these means, the rich obtained greater privdeges, 
coupled however with the condition of serving as heavy-armed troops 
without pay, and at their own expense. A sixth class, which included 
the proletaries (persons without property), were exempt from taxes 
and military service, but were also excluded from aU political rights. 
By these measures, Servius Tullius brought upon himself the hate of 
the patricians, and was in consequence murdered by his son-in-law, 
Tarquinius Superbus, with their assistance. 

§ 98. Tarquinius Superbus enlarged the boundaries of 

the state by successful wars with the Latins, whom he 

united in a confederacv under the direction of Borne : he 
b c 500. . • 

completed the Capitol, and ordered the collection of 

ancient oracles, called the Sibylline books, to be preserved there ; he 

founded the first colony in the neighbouring country of the Vol- 

scians, for the purpose of extending the power of Borne. But despite 

all these services, he rendered himself odious to the patrician party 

by attempting to extend the limited kingly authority. His acts of 

violence against the senate and the patricians, and the severe imposts 

and socage duties with which he visited the plebeians, produced 

general discontent, which finally burst into rebellion when it became 

known in Rome that the outrage which one of the king's sons had 

offered to the virtuous Lucretia, had driven her to self-destruction. 

Two relatives of the royal house, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, the 

husband of Lucretia, and Juuius Brutus, were the leaders of the 



HISTORY OF ROME. 73 

insurrection. Upon receiving information of what was taking place, 
the king, who was just then occupied in the siege of the ancient sea- 
port of Ardea, hastened to Rome with his army, for the purpose of 
suppressing the tumult ; but he found the gates closed against him, 
and being deposed from the throne by a vote of the popular assembly, 
and finding himself deserted by his army, he and his sons were 
obliged to retire into banishment. 



2. ROME AS A REPUBLIC UNDER THE PATRICIANS. 
a. HORATIUS COCLES. THE TRIBUNES. CORIOLANUS. 

§ 99. After the banishment of the royal family, the supreme 
power in Home fell into the hands of the senate. They confirmed 
the laws that were passed in the assemblies of the people, and pro- 
posed the officers that it was the province of the commons to elect. 
Instead of a king, two consuls were chosen every year, who ruled the 
state, superintended the administration of justice, and in time of war 
led the army to the field. The patricians alone, could be chosen to 
these or any other offices. 

The young republic had severe conflicts to sustain both within and 
from without. Under the first consuls, a number of young Romans 
of patrician family, entered into a conspiracy for the purpose of 
bringing back the banished royal family. "When this was discovered, 
the inflexible Brutus punished the offenders, among whom were two 
of his own sons, with death. From without, the Romans were threat- 
ened with the most imminent danger, by the Etruscan king Porsenna, 
to whom Tarquin had applied for help, and who had taken possession 
of the hill Janiculum,.on the right bank of the Tiber. The Romans 
were repulsed in an attempt to drive him from this position, and were 
only saved by the valour of Horatius Codes, who defended the wooden 
bridge that crossed the river. After the Romans had secured themselves 
and destroyed the bridge, Codes sprang into the stream, armed and wea- 
poned as he was, and swam safely to the opposite shore. Another Roman, 
Mutius Scsevola, penetrated into the Etruscan camp for the purpose 
of killing the king. He made a mistake, however, and stabbed the 
royal secretary. "When Porsenna, upon this, endeavoured by threats 
to terrify him into a confession, Mutius, to show that he feared 
neither pain nor death, laid his right hand in the midst of a fire that 
was burning on an altar. It was from this circumstance that he 
received the name of Scsevola (left hand) . Astonished at such a proof 
of courage and patriotism, Porsenna made a peace with the Romans, 
and withdrew his forces. The Romans were however obliged to 
relinquish a third part of their lands, and to give hostages. The 
Veians also, and the confederation of the Latins, took the field in 
support of the Tarquins. Brutus, the founder of the republic, and 



74 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Armis Tarquinius, encountered in the battle, and fell by the 
hands of each other. It was in the war against the Latins that 
the Romans for the first time appointed a dictator, an officer Avho 
was superior to the consiils, and who possessed unlimited power both 
in the city and the field. It was only in times of the greatest 
distress and danger that such a dictator was appointed, and he relin- 
quished his extraordinary office as soon as the necessity for it ceased 
to exist. 

§ 100. "When Tarquin found that all the attempts to regain pos- 
session of his throne had miscarried, he retired to Cumse, in Lower 
Italy, where he died. The patricians now governed the 
state, and oppressed the plebeians by their severe laws 
of debtor and creditor. They (the plebeians) were obliged to pay 
ground-rent for their small properties, to perform military service 
without pay, and to provide their own arms and accoutrements. 
When they were engaged in war their lands were left untilled at 
home : bad harvests brought poverty ; and for the sake of escaping 
from the temporary pressure, they incurred debts with the wealthy 
patricians. If the plebeian failed in paying the large interest (10 or 
12 per cent.) the moment it became due, his person and estate were 
seized upon by his creditor, he was reduced to the condition of a serf, 
and his family were left to starve. When this state of things became 
intolerable, and there was no law to protect the unfortunate debtor 
against his merciless creditor, the plebeians resolved upon 
quitting Some, and building a new town upon the sacred 
hill, about a league and a half from the city. The patricians sent 
Menenius Agrippa after them to induce them to return. He ex- 
plained to them the disadvantages that were likely to arise from their 
dissensions, by relating the fable of the quarrel between the stomach 
and the limbs, and the danger the whole body was reduced to in con- 
sequence, and promised them a redress of their grievances. The 
plebeians allowed themselves to be persuaded, and obtained on their 
return at first five, and afterwards ten tribunes. These were accounted 
sacred and inviolable whilst they were in office : they possessed the 
power of placing their veto upon any resolution of the senate or 
decree of the consuls, which appeared injurious to the interests of 
the people; and if this was not sufficient, they could prevent the levies 
of troops and the collection of taxes. 

Shortly after this, a famine broke out in Eome ; and when at last 
ships arrived from Sicily with corn, the haughty patrician, Marcius 
Coriolanus, proposed that none should be yielded to the people till 
they had consented to the dismissal of their tribunes. "Upon this the 
people, in then assembly, passed a sentence of banish- 
ment upon Coriolanus, and compelled him to fly. Thirst- 
ing for vengeance, he betook himself to the Volscians, and persuaded 



HISTORY OF ROME. 75 

them to make an inroad under his command upon the Eoman terri- 
tories. They had already penetrated in their destructive course, to 
within five miles of Eome, when their general was prevailed upon to 
retreat by the united prayers of his wife and mother. Coriolanus is 
said to have fallen a victim to the rage of the Volscians, who never- 
theless retained possession of the towns they had conquered. 

h. THE TABU. CINCTNNATTTS. THE DECEMVIRS. 

§ 101. Eome was so weakened by the dissensions between the 
different classes, that her foreign foes were able to possess themselves 
of one provincial town after another, and gradually to diminish her 
territory. The plebeians, whose arms were to win the battle, had 
little pleasure in shedding their blood to increase the wealth and 
power of their oppressors ; they even willingly allowed themselves to 
be defeated when they were under the command of one of the rigor- 
ous patricians. Such an event took place in a war against the people 
of Veii, when one of the Fabii was general. The disgrace was so 
severely felt by the high-spirited family of Fabius, that they deserted 
their own party, and making common cause with the plebeians, pro- 
ceeded together to attack the Yeians, but were all ensnared in an 
ambuscade, and died like heroes. One only, who had not arrived at 
years of maturity, survived the destruction of his race. "Whilst the 
Veians were attacking the Eoman territory on the north, the Volsci 
and iEqui made inroads no less destructive on the south. The latter 
of these tribes, whose possessions extended as far as Praeneste, but a 
few miles from Eome, once attacked the Eomans at mount Algidus, 
with such success, that the latter were surrounded in 
their camp, and must have been taken prisoners if Cin- 
cinnatus had not come to their rescue. When the senate were 
informed of the danger the army was in, they appointed the patrician 
Cincinnatus dictator. Cincmnatus was so reduced in his circum- 
stances by misfortunes, that he possessed nothing but a small estate 
on the right bank of the Tiber, which he was tilling with his own 
hands, when the summons of the senate was brought to him. He at 
once quitted the plough, hastened to the place of danger with the 
Eoman youth that assembled themselves about him, and surrounded 
the ^Equi in the night. When these, awakened in the following 
morning by a great shout, saw the situation they were in, they were 
compelled to surrender themselves prisoners of war, and, after giving 
up their arms, to pass under a yoke formed of three spears. 

§ 102. The plebeians waged a hot contest with the patricians for 
an equality of rights. They demanded, above all, an agrarian law, a 
written code, and a share of the pubHc offices. 

The Eoman state was in possession of large tracts of land, which 
were not the exclusive property of any one, but the use of which had 



76 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

been granted to the patricians, upon condition that a tenth part of 
the produce should be paid to the state. This common land (ager 
publicus) the patricians looked upon as their own, had it cidtivated 
by their clients, and mutually overlooked each other's remissness 
when the stipidated duty did not find its way to the treasury. The 
plebeiaus demanded from time to time an agrarian law, by which a 
portion of these common lands should be surrendered to them. But 
as often as the application was made it was encountered by a most 
decided resistance. The consul, Sp. Cassius, who moved the first 
agrarian law, was thrown from the Tarpeian rock of the Capitol, and 
the place where his house had stood remained empty and desolate. 

§ 103. The administration of the law was exclusively in the hands 
of the patricians, who gave judgment and pronounced decisions 
according to custom and unwritten traditionary rules, and were thus 
frequently guilty of arbitrariness and partiality. The plebeians, to 
escape from these evils, demanded a fixed and written code, but 
experienced a violent resistance from the patricians. After many 
stormy debates, the tribunes of the people were at last successful in 
having envoys sent to Grsecia Magna and Athens, to ex- 
amine the laws, and to select those that should appear 
suitable. "When these envoys returned, both parties agreed that all 
the officers of government (consuls, tribunes, &c.) should give up 
then places ; and that ten patricians shovdd be appointed with abso- 
lute power, and commissioned to draw up fresh laws. At first the 
new officers, who, from their number, were called " decemvirs," per- 
formed the task committed to them in an exemplary manner, and at 
the end of the year, their laws gave so much satisfaction to the assem- 
bly of the people, that the decemvirate was allowed to continue 
another year, for the completion of its work. But now the ten 
patricians abused their authority by violent and arbitrary measures : 
they proceeded against their plebeian opponents by fine, imprison- 
ment, banishment, and the axe of the executioner ; when a war broke 
out with the iEqui and Volscians, they put to death an ancient ple- 
beian hero in the field ; and continued themselves in office by their 
own power, after the second year had passed, and the compilation of 
the laws of the twelve tables had been completed. The general dis- 
content was fanned into revolt by a licentious outrage of Appius 
Claudius, the most illustrious of the decemvirs. This man had con- 
ceived a passion for the beautifid Virginia, daughter of one of the 
plebeian leaders, and the bride of another. In order to gain posses- 
sion of her, he instructed one of his adherents to declare the maiden to 
be one of his runaway slaves, and to claim her as his property before 
the judgment-seat of the decemvirs. Appius Claudius heard the 
claim in the forum in the presence of a great multitude of the people ; 
but scarcely had he, by his decision, put Virginia into the power of 



HISTORY OF ROME. 77 

the appellant, when her father hastened to the spot and plunged a 
knife into her heart. The plebeians now seized upon the Aventine 
hill, and insisted with threats upon the expulsion of the decemvirs 
and the restoration of the old system. They obtained both : Appius 
Claudius destroyed himself in prison, another of the decemvirs was 
executed, and the rest expiated their crimes by perpetual exile. The 
laws of the twelve tables, however, remained in operation, and became 
the basis of the Roman code. 

§ 104. Shortly after this, the plebeians succeeded in having it 
enacted, that the two classes might contract lawful mar- 
riages Avith each other, without the children of such unions 
forfeiting any of the privileges of their class ; and they at length pro- 
ceeded to claim a participation in the considate. But this demand 
was resisted by the patricians with their whole strength ; and when at 
last the plebeians prevented the raising of levies for military service, 
they declared that they would rather have no more consuls than agree 
to the admission of the plebeians to the office. At length it was 
arranged, that three or four military tribunes, with the 
authority of consuls, should be chosen every year from 
both classes, as leaders of the army and chief magistrates. This 
arrangement lasted for some centuries. But it occasionally happened 
that the patrician party gained the upper hand, and then consuls 
would be again elected for a few years, or the office of military 
tribune would remain unfilled. To make amends for their loss, the 
patricians instituted the office of censors. These, two in number, 
had the keeping of the lists in which every Roman was entered 
according to his property, as senator, knight, or citizen ; they super- 
intended the building of temples, streets, and bridges, and exercised 
a censorial supervision, by virtue of which they might deprive men of 
vicious lives of the privileges of their class. 

C. THE TAKING OE ROME BY THE GAULS (B.C. 389), AND THE 
LAWS OE LICTHTUS STOLO (B.C. 366). 

§ 105. Whilst these struggles were going on within the city, the 

Roman army was successfully engaged against the enemy. Since the 

regulation that the citizens should receive pay during war, the troops 

could continue longer in the field. After extending their territories 

on the south, they turned their whole force against the Etruscans, 

and under the command of Camillus, subdued, after a 
b.c. 396. 

siege of ten years, the hostile city of Veii, the inhabitants 

of which were either killed or rediiced to slavery. The haughty 

general who had drawn upon himself the hatred of the plebeians 

by his splendid triumph and unequal distribution of the booty, 

withdrew voluntarily into exile when summoned by the tribunes 

of the people to answer for his conduct, and by this means 



78 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

deprived the state of his aid at the very moment it was most 
required. 

§ 106. For it was about this time that the Gaids in the neighbour- 
hood of the Po, crossed the Apennines and laid siege to the Etruscan 
city of Clusium. The inhabitants turned for assistance to the 
Romans, who, however, contented themselves with sending an em- 
bassy to effect a reconciliation. When this faded of success, the 
ambassadors took part in the contest, and killed one of the leaders of 
the Gallic army. This outrage of the rights of nations inflamed the 
anger of the G-auls. They left Clusium, advanced by rapid marches 
upon Rome, and gave the force sent to oppose them so complete an 
overthrow at the river Allia, that only a few fugitives saved them- 
selves across the Tiber in Veii ; and the day of the battle was ever 
after distinguished by a black mark in the Roman calendar, and 
observed as a time of fasting and prayer. Rome itself, after being 
deserted by the women and children, fell without resistance into the 
hands of the enemy. The Gauls burnt the empty city to the ground, 
slaughtered about eighty old men in the forum, who were desirous of 
devoting themselves as expiatory sacrifices, and then laid siege to the 
Capitol, whither those who were capable of bearing arms had with- 
drawn themselves. The garrison, however, under the command of 
the heroic Marcus Manlius, making a gallant resistance, and the 
ranks of the Gauls being thinned by sickness and hunger, a treaty 
was entered into after the siege had continued seven months, by 
which the Gauls consented to withdraw themselves upon being paid 
a ransom of a thousand pounds weight of gold. It is well known how 
their insolent leader, Brennus, increased the stipulated amount by 
the weight of his sword, which he cast into the scale. The story of 
the banished Camillus pursuing the retreating enemy with a troop of 
fugitive Romans, and again recovering the spoil from them, is doubted, 
and may be attributed, not without reason, to Roman vanity. 

§ 107. After the retreat of the enemy, the Romans were so 
dispirited that they had not courage to rebuild their city, but wished 
to settle themselves in the empty town of Veii. It was only with 
difficulty that the patricians prevented the execution of this project, 
and that no similar purpose might again be entertained, the houses 
in Veii were given up to the people to be pulled down. Scarcely had 
Rome been hastily rebuilt with narrow and crooked streets, and ' 
small dwelling-houses, when the patricians again asserted the whole 
of their claims, and in particular revived the ancient laws of debtor 
and creditor in all their ancient severity. The preserver of the 
capitol, M. Manlius (Capitolinus), took the part of the oppressed 
and impoverished plebeians ; but incurred the enmity of those of his 
own order to such an extent by doing so, that, under the frivolous 
pretext that he was attempting to gain the kingly power, he was con- 



HISTORY OF ROME. 79 

derailed to death, and thereupon cast from the Tarpeian rock, his 
house levelled with the ground, and his memory declared 
infamous. But this severity against the friend of the 
people roused the plebeians from their apathy. Two bold and able 
tribunes, Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius, proposed the three following 
laws : — 1. Consuls shall be again chosen, but one of them shall 
always be a plebeian. 2. No citizen shall hold more than 500 acres 
of public land in lease ; the remainder shall be distributed in small 
portions among the plebeians as their own property. 3. The interest 
already paid upon debts shall be deducted from the capital sum, and 
the residue shall be paid in the course of three years. 

These proposals were resisted to the utmost by the patricians, for 
the space of ten years ; but all their efforts proved unavailing against 
the firmness of the tribunes, who prevented the election of officers 
and the military levies. The proposals became laws, and the privi- 
leges of the patricians received a severe shock. It is true that they 
still retained exclusive possession of the priesthood and certain other 
dignities ; but in the course of a few decades, the plebeians were 
admitted to these offices also, so that a perfect equality between the 
two classes shortly followed. This civil concord, to which Camillus a 
short time before his death dedicated a temple, brought with it a 
period of civic virtue and heroic greatness. 



II. ROME'S HEROIC PERIOD. 

1. THE TIME OE THE ¥AE WITH THE SAMNITES, AND THE BATTLES 
WITH PTKRHUS. 

§ 108. After the Eomans had exercised their military prowess in 
some successful engagements with the wandering hordes of the 
Gauls, they attempted to subdue the neighbouring tribes. Among 
these the warlike and freedom-loving Samnites, who dwelt amidst the 
lofty ridges of the Apennines, gave them the greatest trouble, and 
they were forced to carry on the war against them, almost without 
intermission, for more than seventy years. The inhabitants of Capua 
and the Campanian plain, who were unable to withstand the hostile 
attacks of the warlike Samnites, and who turned to the Eomans for 
assistance, were the occasion of the war. At first the Eomans refused 
them assistance ; but the Capuans having recognised their authority, 
and placed themselves entirely under their protection, they marched 
into the field and defeated the enemy with great courage, at Cumse, 
near Mount Graurus. 

§ 109. Shortly after this, the Eomans found them- 
selves menaced with a war by the Latins, who had 
hitherto been their allies. These were no longer disposed to recog- 
nise Eome as the head of the confederation, but required a share in 



80 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

the senate, the consulate, and all offices. Upon this, the Romans, 
who were not inclined to yield to these demands, con- 
cluded a hasty peace and alliance with the Samnites, that 
they might turn their arms against the nearer enemy. When the 
army was at the foot of Vesuvius, the consul Manlius Torquatus 
forbade any skirmishing. In defiance of this command, his valiant 
son made an excursion against the enemy, and overcame them, but 
was condemned to death for disobedience by his inflexible father. 
The battle of Vesuvius was determined in favour of the 
Romans by the patriotism of the plebeian consul, Decius 
Mus, who, having had himself devoted to death by a priest, enveloped 
himself in a white robe, and, mounting on horseback, plunged among 
the thickest of the enemy ; whereupon the Latins, together with 
their neighbours, the Volsci, iEqui, and Hernici, submitted them- 
selves, and were received, with different privileges, as the allies of the 
Romans. In this capacity they were obliged to perform military 
service in the Roman army. 

§ 110. The success of the Romans awakened the jealousy of the 
Samnites. Quarrels respecting boundaries led to a re- 
newal of hostilities, in which the Romans at first had the 
advantage, till the imprudent advance of the consuls, Veturius and 
Posthumius, into the Caudinian passes, brought the army into such 
a desperate position, that it was obliged to surrender to the hostile 
general, Pontius, who had surrounded it on every side, and after 
giving up its weapons, to pass ignominiously under the yoke. The 
senate however, with an unworthy equivocation, declared the treaty 
that the generals had concluded in their necessity with Pontius, to be 
invalid, and delivered up the consuls, at their own request, in chains 
to the Samnites. The generals who succeeded them, especially the 
vigorous Papirius Cursor and Pabius Maximus, strained every nerve 
to wipe away the disgrace ; and their endeavours were crowned with 
such success, that, after a few years, the Samnites, being no longer 
able to resist the attacks of the Romans, were obliged to look around 
them for assistance. They united themselves with the TJmbrians, 
the Gauls, and Etruscans, who were also threatened by Rome's love 
of conquest ; and, for the sake of being closer to their new allies, they 
quitted their own country and marched into ITmbria. 

B c 9 95 • • 

But the battle of Sentinum, which was decided in favour 
of the Romans by the self-oblation of the younger Decius Mus, 
destroyed the last hopes of the allies. Their great general, Pontius, 
fell shortly afterwards into the hands of the Romans, and was put to 
a violent death. It was in vain that the sacred band of the Samnites 
once more tried their strength and their swords against the Romans ; 
Curius Pentatus gave them a second overthrow, in which the Sam- 
nite youth, the pride of the nation, moistened the field of battle with 



HISTORY OF ROME. SI 

their blood. The Samnites and their confederates, the ITmbrians, 

Etruscans, and the Senonian Gauls, were compelled to 
B.C. 290. 

acknowledge the supremacy of Borne, and to serve -as 

allies in her army. 

§ 111. During the war with the Samnites, the rich, effeminate, and 
cowardly Tarentines had behaved in an equivocal manner, and 
insulted a Roman ambassador. Scarcely therefore had the Romans 
completely mastered their enemies, than they turned their arms 
against Lower Italy. Hereupon the Tarentines called the warlike 
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, to their assistance, who eagerly seized this 
opportunity for conquest and military renown, and embarked with 
his forces for Italy. Pyrrhus was victorious in two 
engagements, partly from the admirable disposition he 
made of his army, and partly by means of his elephants, an animal 
with which the Romans were unacquainted ; and the senate seemed 
not unwilling to conclude a disadvantageous peace with the con- 
queror, who was marching upon Rome. But the blind Appius 
Claudius opposed this design, and induced the assembly to reply, that 
no proposals for peace could be entertained till Pyrrhus had quitted 
Italy. The admiration of the king, who had hitherto only been ac- 
quainted with the degenerate manners of the Greeks, was not less 
excited by the wisdom and dignified demeanour of the senate, and 
the civic virtues, honesty, and simplicity of the Roman generals, 
Eabricius and Curius Dentatus, than by the heroism, the bravery, 
and the warlike skill of the legions. 

A short time after, Pyrrhus was called into Sicily by the Syra- 
cusans, to assist them against the Carthaginians. A love of adven- 
ture and conquest induced him to accept the invitation; but he failed 
in his plan of making himself master of the beautiful island, and was 
compelled by the Sicilian Greeks to return. He again marched 

towards Tarentum, but suffered such a defeat at Male- 
is c 275 

ventum (afterwards called Beneventum), from Curius 

Dentatus, that he found himself obliged to make a hasty retreat. 

Pyrrhus fell a few years afterwards, before Argos, a city 

of Peloponnesus ; and about the same time, the Tarentines 

lost their fleet, and a portion of their treasures of art, and were made 

tributaries by the Romans. The fall of Tarentum was followed by 

the subjugation of the whole of Lower Italy, in the course of which 

the Greek states were treated with peculiar severity. 



2. THE TIME OF THE PUNIC WAPS. 
a. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR. (B.C. 263 — 241.) 

§ 112. Many centuries before, some Phoenician emigrants had founded 
the trading city of Carthage, on the north coast of Africa (§ 14), 



S2 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

which soon attained to power and opulence by the skill and enter- 
prising spirit of its inhabitants. The Carthaginians carried on an 
extensive traffic with all the lands on the coast of the Mediterranean, 
established tributary colonial cities in Sicily and the south of Spain, 
and acquired such wealth, that they laid out the land in the vicinity 
of their own city after the manner of a garden, and embellished it 
with innumerable magnificent vfllas. But civic freedom, mental 
cultivation, and nobility of mind, were possessions foreign to the 
Carthaginians. The government was in the hands of a purse-proud 
aristocracy, art and literature were little esteemed, their religious sys- 
tem was so barbarous as to permit the sacrifice of human victims, and 
then cunning and falsehood so notorious, that the "Punic faith" was 
proverbial. Long was the contest between the Carthaginians and 
Syracusans, for the possession of the island of Sicily. At the time 
that the gallant adventurer Agathocles, had raised himself from the 
humble condition of a potter to tbe empire of Syracuse, this contest 

was carried on with such changes of fortune, that Syra- 
b.c. 317. 

cuse was besieged by the Carthaginians, and Carthage 

by the army of Agathocles, at the same time. The latter made him- 
self master of the north coast of Africa, and assumed the title of 
king. But a change soon took place : his army was destroyed, and 
he himself obliged to fly secretly to Syracuse, where his vital powers 
was so wasted by a poison that was administered to him, that the 
hoary tyrant consented to his own death by fire. His death gave 

rise to a state of lawless violence in Sicily, owing to his 
B.C. 289. . . 

Campanian soldiers (Mamertines) having seized upon the 

town of Messina on their way home, slaughtered or driven away the 
male part of the inhabitants, and then filled the island with robbery 
and devastation. In this distress, the Syracusans elected the valiant 
Hiero for their king. He marched, in conjunction with the Cartha- 
ginians, against the Mamertines, defeated them, and laid siege to 
their city Messina. The Mamertines were shortly reduced to such 
extremities that they applied to the Romans for assistance. 

§ 113. The Romans did not long hesitate to enter into a defensive 
alliance with the rapacious Mamertines, and to gain by this means an 
opportunity of subjecting the rich and beautiful island, although they 
saw plainly that the jealous Carthaginians, who were already in pos- 
session of the citadel of Messina, would oppose them with all their 
strength. A Roman army shortly after succeeded in driving back 
the disunited enemy from the walls of the city, in bringing Hiero 
into an alliance with Rome, and depriving the Carthaginians of the 
important town of Agrigentum. Upon this, the Romans built a fleet 
after the model of a shipwrecked Punic vessel, and won the first naval 
engagement, by means of the consul Duillius, at Mylse, 
near the Liparian islands. Encouraged by this success, 



HISTORY OF ROME. 33 

they now determined to deprive the Carthaginians of their supre- 
macy at sea, and passed over to Africa with a fleet and a large army, 
under the command of the heroic consul Eegulus. Eegulus gradually 
approached, conquering and devastating, to the gates of Carthage. 
The terrified Carthaginians sued for peace, but when they found the 
conditions offered them by the haughty conqueror too severe, they 
prepared for resistance, increased the number of their mercenary 
troops, and committed the conduct of the defence to an experienced 
general, the Spartan Xantippus. This leader gave the Eomans so 
severe a defeat at the sea-port town of Tunes, that only 2000 of 
their splendid army escaped, the others were either killed or made 
prisoners of war, with the consul Eegulus. 

§ 114. This blow was followed by a succession of misfortunes : two 
fleets were destroyed by tempests, so that for some years the Eomans 
renounced all thoughts of success by sea ; on land they only ventured 
upon trifling engagements, from fear of the elephants, of which they 
themselves never made use, though the battle at Tunes had been 
decided by them. In a few years, however, they recovered them- 
selves ; they made a successful sally from Panormus 
(Palermo), drove back the Carthaginians, and took pos- 
session of all their elephants. Hereupon the Carthaginians sent 
Eegulus to Eome to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, after they 
had obtained from him an oath that if not successful he would return 
to captivity. Eegulus advised the senate not to consent to the 
exchange, on the ground that it would be disadvantageous to their 
country ; and then, true to his oath, returned to Carthage. Upon 
this, the Carthaginians were greatly enraged, and put Eegulus to 
death in a most barbarous manner. 

Victory remained for some years dubious. At length the admir- 
able Carthaginian general, Hamilcar Barcas, made himself master of 
the citadel Eryx, and overlooked from a lofty rock all the movements 
of the Eomans. But this was only possible so long as there was no 
Eoman fleet to prevent the communication with the sea. As soon 
as 200 ships had been fitted out at Eome, by private contributions, 
and by employing the treasures in the temples, and 
the consul Lutatius Catulus had defeated the enemy's 
fleet at the iEgatian islands, the Carthaginians were compelled 
to consent to a peace, in which they renounced their claims upon 
Sicily, and promised to pay a large sum to defray the expenses of 
the war. 

b. THE SECOND PTJNIC WAE. (B.C. 218 — 202.) 

§ 115. Whilst the Carthaginians, after the peace, were engaged for 
three years in a frightful war with their rebellious mercenaries, the 

g2 



84 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Romans were enlarging their territory in every direction. 

They transformed Sicily into the first Roruan province; 
took possession of Corsica and Sardinia after a severe struggle with 
the semi-barbarous inhabitants ; and wrested the island of Corcyra 
(Corfu) and a few maritime towns from the piratical Illyrians. But 
the hardest conflict they had to sustain was with the Cisalpine Gauls, 

who, supported by their brethren in the Alps, had made 

a destructive inroad upon Etruria. After the Romans 
had overthrown their brave, but badly-armed enemies, in two bloody 
engagements, the fertile regions on either side of the Po were erected 
into a Roman province, under the name of Gallia Cisalpina, and con- 
nected with Rome by two military roads. 

§ 116. In the meanwhile, the Carthaginians, at first under the 
command of the brave Hamilcar Barcas, and after his death under 
that of the prudent Hasdrubal, extended their conquests into the 
richly metalliferous region of South Spain, and established an admir- 
able military station in New Carthage (Carthagena). This aroused 
the fear and envy of the Romans, and iuduced them to enter into a 
defensive alliance with the Greek colony of Saguntum, on the north- 
east coast of Spain. Hasdrubal soon died, and his place was supplied 
by Hamilcar' s son, Hannibal, who was then twenty-five years of age,' 
and who joined the courage and military talents of his father to the 
prudence of his predecessor, and who, whilst yet a boy, had sworn 
eternal hatred against the Romans upon the paternal altar. Eager to 
measure himself against the Romans, he laid siege to the confederate 
town of Saguntum. It was iu vain that the Roman envoys warned 
him to desist, he referred them to the Carthaginian senate, but in the 
meanwhile pressed the town so closely, that he took it in eight 
months. The most resolute of the inhabitants collected their goods 
together in the market-place, set them on fire, and threw themselves 
into the flames ; the others died by the sword of the enemy, or 
beneath the ruins of their houses. Saguntum was reduced to a heap 
of rubbish. The Roman embassy, Avhen too late, declared war in 
Carthage. 

§ 117. It was in the spring of the year 218 B.C. that Hannibal 
crossed the Ebro, subjected the tribes in that neighbourhood; and 
then, with an army of 60,000 men, and thirty-seven elephants, pene- 
trated across the Pyrenees into Gaul, whilst his brother Hasdrubal, 
with an equal number of troops, held Spain in subjection. After 
Hannibal had forced a passage through South Gaul and over the 
Rhone, he commenced his ever memorable passage of the Alps 
(probably by the way of mount Cenis). In the midst of perpetual 
contests with the savage inhabitants, the soldiers climbed over lofty 
mountains covered with snow and ice, without road and without 



HISTORY OF ROME. 85 

shelter, — over precipices and gulfs. Nearly half the troops and the 
whole of the beasts of burden were destroyed. But these losses were 
soon replaced, when, after a march of fourteen days, Hannibal arrived 
in Upper Italy. For no sooner was the consul Corn. Scipio defeated 
and severely wounded, in an affair of cavalry on the Ticinus, and his 
fellow-consul, the imprudent Sempronius, completely routed at the 
rashly undertaken battle of Trebia, than the Cisalpine Gauls joined 
Hannibal's standard. After a short rest in Liguria, he 
crossed the rugged Apennines, a most toilsome march (in 
the course of which he lost an eye from inflammation), and continued 
his devastating course into Etruria. The consul Plaminius en- 
countered him at the lake Trasimenus, but by his inconsiderate 
rashness sustained a total defeat, in which he himself lost his life, 
and his soldiers were either killed or drowned in the waters of the 
lake. The road to Rome was now open to the victor ; but he deter- 
mined upon marching into Apulia, for the purpose of inducing the 
inhabitants of Lower Italy to revolt. 

§ 118. It was at this time, that a man opposed himself to the 
Carthaginian general, who, by his prudence and circumspection, occa- 
sioned him many difficulties, — the dictator Pabius Maxhnus, the 
Delayer. He avoided an open engagement, but followed the hostile 
army foot by foot, and turned every unfortunate movement to his 
own advantage. He reduced it to such a perilous position in Cam- 
pania, by taking possession of the mountain heights, that Hannibal 
was only able to save himself by an artifice, — driving oxen, with 
bundles of lighted brushwood tied to their horns, up the hill, by which 
means he deceived the enemy. But the discontent of the imprudent 
people at this lingering mode of warfare, induced the consul Terentius 
Varro, in the following year, again to hazard an engagement, against 
the advice of his colleague, Paulus iEmilius. Hereupon 
followed the dreadful defeat of the Romans at Cannae, 
where the number of the slain was so great, that Hannibal is said to 
have sent three bushels of rings to Carthage, which were stripped 
from the arms of the Boman knights. The high-minded Paulus 
■JEmilius was found among the slain. The day of the battle of 
Cannae, like that of the defeat at the Allia, (§ 105,) was marked in the 
Boman calendar as a time of prayer and fasting. The immoveable 
senate, however, preserved its courage and composure ; all who fled 
at Cannae were declared infamous, and expelled from the army. 

§ 119. Hannibal did not consider it advisable to advance at once 
upon Borne with his shattered forces, but established his winter quar- 
ters in the rich and luxurious city of Capua. But it was here that 
his rugged warriors were rendered effeminate and lost their love of 
war. The Bomans, on the other hand, made new preparations with 
extraordinary rapidity, so that in the spring they were able to send 



86 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

fresh troops into the field, whilst in the mean time Hannibal's army- 
had received no re-inforcements from Carthage. Two 

B c °15 

successful engagements restored the courage of the Ro- 

mans, and put them in a position to chastise the towns of Sicily and 

Lower Italy, which after the battle of Cannae had revolted 

B c 9 14 

to Hannibal. Marcellus went over to Sicily and laid 
siege to Syracuse ; which defended itself with so much courage and 
success, by the aid of the ingenious mathematician and philosopher, 
Archimedes, that it was only by the greatest efforts, and 
after a siege of three years, that Marcellus could make 
himself master of the place. The revenge of the Romans was fearful : 
the soldiers plundered and slaughtered ; Archimedes was slain at his 
studies, the finest works of art were sent to Rome, and the glory of 
Syracuse was gone for ever. Capua experienced a similar fate. The 
place was closely besieged by two Roman legions ; the terrified inha- 
bitants implored the assistance of Hannibal, who advanced upon 
Home in the hope that the Romans woidd hasten to the relief of 
their capital, and relinquish the siege. But one legion, in conjunc- 
tion with a few other troops, was sufficient to compel 
Hannibal to retreat, and the Capuans, reduced by hunger, 
were obliged to surrender to the other. Twenty-seven senators died 
by their own hands, and fifty-three by the axe of the executioner ; 
the citizens were reduced to slavery, and their property bestowed 
upon foreign colonists. The treasures of Capua were sent to Some, 
all her privileges were destroyed, and from henceforth the city was 
governed by a Roman prefect. Two years later, Tarentum fell again 
into the hands of the Romans. Fabius Maximus reduced the in- 
habitants to slavery, and took possession of the treasures, but suffered 
the statues of the "Angry Cods" to remain. Pear soon brought all 
the revolted states back to the Romans, and Hannibal's position, 
without money, without re-inforcements, and without supplies, be- 
came every day more precarious. 

§ 120. Spain was now Hannibal's only hope, since he was deserted 
by his ungrateful country. It was there, that Hannibal's brother, 
Hasdrubal, after having opposed the Romans for a long time with 
success, was at length reduced to such straits by the young and high- 
spirited Cornelius Scipio, that he was unable to remain in the country 
any longer, and consequently resolved upon uniting himself with his 
brother, who had summoned him into Italy. Following Hannibal's 
passage across the Alps, he marched into Upper Italy, and then 
directed his course towards the coast of the Adriatic sea, 

B.C. 208. .,1,1 n ...,., , , 

with the purpose ol joining his brother, who was en- 
camped in Lower Italy, opposite the consul Claudius Nero. But the 
daring resolution of this consul to effect a secret junction with his 
colleague, Livius Salinator, by a rapid march upon TJmbria, led to the 



HISTORY OF ROME. 87 

death of Hasdrubal and the destruction of his army, at 

the river Metaurus, before Hannibal had received notice 

of his approach. In the bloody head of Hasdrubal, which the consul, 

on his return, threw into the enemy's camp, the dispirited general 

recognized the " fearful fate of Carthage." 

§ 121. It was in misfortune that Hannibal displayed the real great- 
ness of his military talents. "Without help from without, and without 
allies in Italy, he still maintained himself, with the remains of his 
army, for some years, in the extreme south, against the superior force 
of the enemy. But when the victorious Scipio returned, after the 
subjugation of Spain, passed over from Sicily into Africa, with some 
fugitives and volunteers, and, setting fire in the neigh- 
bourhood of Utica to the enemy's camp, which consisted 
of tents made of straw and reeds, attacked them during the con- 
fusion, Hannibal was recalled to defend his country. Sorrowful and 
angry he quitted the land of his renown. It was in vain that he 
endeavoured, during a conference, to persuade his opponent to con- 
clude a treaty, by representing the instability of fortune. Scipio 
would not listen to the proposal ; whereupon the battle 
of Zama followed, and ended in the defeat of the Car- 
thaginians. Hannibal himself now advised a peace, hard as the 
conditions were. The Carthaginians were obliged to take an oath 
never to commence war without the consent of the Romans, they 
were compelled to renounce their claims upon Spain, to give up their 
ships of war, and to pledge themselves to pay an enormous sum to 
defray the expenses of the contest. After burning the Carthaginian 
fleet, and investing Masinissa (afterwards called Africanus), a friend 
of the Romans, with the kingdom of Numidia, Scipio returned to 
Rome, where a splendid triumph awaited him. Hannibal, on the 
other hand, was obliged, a short time after, to leave his home, a per- 
secuted refugee, and carried his hatred of the Romans to the court of 
the Syrian king, Antiochus. 

C. MACEDONIA CONQUERED ; CORINTH AND CARTHAGE DESTROYED. 

§ 122. About this time, King Philip II. reigned over Macedonia 
and a part of Greece. He had entered into an alliance with Han- 
nibal, and made war on the Romans and their confederates in Greece 
and Asia Minor. It was for this reason that the Romans now turned 
their arms against him. They sent their general, Flaminius, a clever 
man, and one who took an interest in Greek art and literature, into 
Greece; he summoned the states to freedom, and then gave the 
Macedonians an overthrow at the Dogsheads, a range of 
hills in Thessaly. By this, Philip saw himself compelled 
to a peace by which he acknowledged the independence of Greece, 
gave up his fleet and a great sum of money, and renounced the right 



88 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

of making war on his own account. To gratify the vanity of the 
Greeks, the suhtle Plaminius caused the deliverance of Greece from 
the Macedonian yoke, to be proclaimed with magnificent ceremonies 
at the Isthmian games. But it was soon evident that the Romans 
were quite as eager to assume the government of Greece as ever the 
Macedonians had been. It was for this reason that many of the 
Greek tribes, and in particular the warlike iEtolians, who had united 
themselves in a confederation similar to that of the Achaians, applied 
to the Syrian king, Antiochus III., for aid (§ 90) . Antiochus, at whose 
court Hannibal was living, yielded to the demand ; but instead of 
joining Philip II. and attacking the Romans with united forces, he 
squandered his time idly in feasting and luxury, and gave offence to 
the Macedonian king ; whilst the Romans marched rapidly into 
Thessaly, and after storming the pass of Thermopylae under Porcius 
Cato, compelled the Syrian king to retreat into Asia. But he was 
immediately followed thither by a Roman army, under the command 
of L. Corn. Scipio, with his brother Africanus at his side, for coun- 
sellor. 

A murderous engagement took place at Magnesia, near mount 
Sipylus, which terminated to the disadvantage of Antiochus, who was 
compelled to purchase a peace by the cession of "Western Asia, this 
side the Taurus, and by the payment of an enormous sum for the 
expenses of the war. The rapacious JEtolians were also subdued 
and punished in their purses and their treasures of art. 

Hannibal, threatened with being delivered up to the Romans, fled 
to Prusias, king of Bithynia ; but when this prince coidd no longer 
venture to defend him, he swallowed poison on a lonely 
hill, to escape falling into the hands of his mortal ene- 
mies. At the same time, his great antagonist, Scipio, died at his 
estate in Lower Italy, far away from Rome, from whence he had been 
driven by the malice of his enemies. To make this year thoroughly 
fatal, Philopoemen was also compelled to drink the cup of poison 
(§88). 

§ 123. Perseus, the wicked son of Philip II., made his way to the 
Macedonian throne by crimes, inasmuch as he provoked the suspicious 
father to the murder of his son Demetrius, a noble prince, and well 
disposed to the Romans. Perseus was scarcely in possession of his 
crown, before his hatred to the Romans induced him to begin a new 
war. His enormous wealth enabled him to make vast preparations, 
but avarice and perverse measures soon occasioned his fall. After 
the victory obtained by the expert tactician and accom- 
plished man, Paulus iEmflius, at Pydna, Perseus fell into 
the power of the Romans, was led in triumph, together with his trea- 
sures and his captive children and friends, through the streets of the 
mistress of the world ; and shortly after, ended his life in solitary 



HISTORY OF ROME. 89 

confinement. Macedonia was divided into four provinces, and placed 
under a republican form of government ; 1000 noble Aehaians, among 
whom was tbe great historical writer, Polybius, were conveyed to 
Rorne as hostages, on the plea of a secret understanding with Perseus. 
Twenty years later, a pretended son of Perseus raised the standard of 
rebellion. This gave the Romans the wished-for oppor- 
tunity of converting Macedonia into a Roman province, 
after the subjection of the impostor by Metellus. Metellus had not 
yet quitted the conquered territory, when the Achaian league also 
took up arms to rid themselves of Rome's oppressive authority. 
Metellus overthrew the Aehaians who marched against him in two 
engagements ; but was obliged to leave the termination of the war to 
his rude successor, Mummius, who stormed Corinth, 
and burnt it to the ground. The inhabitants were either 
slain or reduced to slavery, the treasures of art destroyed or sent to 
Rome, and Greece was converted into a Roman province, under the 
name of Achaia. The prosperity of the once-flourishing states dis- 
appeared beneath the pressure of Roman taxation, and every spark of 
the patriotism and love of liberty of a former age was extinguished. 
The Spartans continued their rude trade of war as mercenaries, whilst 
the Athenians sought a subsistence among the Romans, as artists and 
men of learning, as players and dancers, as poets and beaux esprits ; 
but were treated with little respect. 

§ 124. In the meanwhile, Carthage had again recovered a portion 
of her prosperity. This re-awakened the envy of the Romans, and 
gave emphasis to Cato's expression, "that Carthage must be de- 
stroyed. " Masinissa, king of Numidia, relying upon Roman pro- 
tection, enlarged his own territories at the expense of those of the 
Carthaginians ; and at last irritated them so much by perpetual 
quarrels about boundaries, that they took up arms to defend their 
own possessions. This was looked upon in Rome as an infringement 
of the peace, and occasioned a declaration of war. The Car- 
thaginians implored indulgence, and delivered up, at the demand of 
the Romans, first, 300 respectable hostages, and afterwards, their ships 
and weapons. But when this was followed by a decree that Carthage 
should be burnt to the ground, and a new city erected farther from 
the coast, the inhabitants determined rather to perish beneath the 
rains of their houses than submit to such a disgrace. A spirit of 
courage and patriotism took possession of all sexes and conditions. 
The town presented the appearance of a camp ; the temples were 
converted into smithies for forging arms, and every thing was made 
subservient to the lofty purpose of saving the state. Even the 
veteran legions of Rome were unable to withstand such enthusiasm 
as this. They were repeatedly repulsed and reduced to a precarious 
condition, until the younger Scipio, the able son of Paulus iEmilius, 



90 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

who had been adopted into the family of Scipio during childhood, 
was appointed to the consulate before the lawful age, with dictatorial 
power. After a most desperate resistance, and a murderous conflict 
for six days in the streets, it was he who at length succeeded in 
reducing the city, after it had suffered all the extremities of famine. 
The rage of the soldiers, and a conflagration that lasted for seventeen 
days, converted Carthage, the once proud mistress of the Mediter- 
ranean, into a heap of ruins ; 50,000 inhabitants, whom the sword 
had spared, were carried into slavery by the conqueror, who from this 
time bore the name of the younger Africanus. The territory of 
Carthage was turned into a Roman province, called Africa, and the 
rebuilding of the city denounced with a curse. 

d. THE MANNERS AND CULTURE OE THE ROMANS. 

§ 125. The acquaintance of the Romans with Greece was attended 
with the most important consequences to their civilization, manners, 
and mode of living. The works of Greek art and literature that 
had been taken from the conquered towns, produced in the more 
susceptible part of the nation, a taste for cultivation, and awakened a 
fresh class of feelings. A powerful party, at the head of which stood 
the Scipios, Marcellus, Flaminius, and many others, patronised the 
Greek philosophy, poetry, and art; cherished and supported the learned 
men, philosophers, and poets, of that nation ; and sought to transport 
the spirit and language of the conquered people to Rome, together 
with their works of art. Under the protection of the Scipios, Roman 
poets wrote verses in imitation of their Greek prototypes. This was 
the case with their writers of comedy, Plautus and Terence, the latter 
of whom is said to have been assisted in his compositions by the 
younger Scipio and his friend Laflius. Since, however, the minds of 
the Romans were directed entirely to the practical, to the conduct of 
war, the government of the state, and the administration of justice, 
intellectual culture never could attain to the same height among them 
as with the Greeks : the people found more pleasure in spectacles 
addressed to the senses, rough gladiatorial combats, and the contests' 
of wild animals, than in the productions of the mind. 

But literature and the arts were not the only things that were 
borrowed ; elegance and refinement in the arrangement of dwellings, 
luxury and extravagance in meals and dress, politeness and suavity in 
social intercourse, sensual enjoyments and luxurious pleasures, were 
copied by the Romans from the Greeks and Orientals. The victors 
inherited the vices and excesses of the conquered people, along with 
their wealth and civilization. An opposite party, with Porcius Cato 
at its head, earnestly combated the new system that threatened to 
destroy the ancient manners, discipline, simplicity, moderation, and 
hardihood. The severity with which this remarkable man, in his 



HISTORY OF ROME. 91 

office of censor, opposed the new direction of things, has made his 
name proverbial. By his aid, the Greek philosophers were banished 
from Rome ; the schools of oratory closed ; the dissolute festivals of 
Bacchus, and other religious customs derived from abroad, inter- 
dicted ; the Scipios punished as corrupters of morals ; and laws 
proclaimed against luxury and excess. For the purpose of counter- 
acting the influence of the new literature, he himself wrote works 
upon agriculture, the basis of Borne' s former greatness, and upon the 
people of ancient Italy, whose simplicity and purity of morals he 
wished to contrast to the commencing degeneracy of his time. But 
the example of Cato, who learned Greek in his old age, shows that 
the rigid attachment to the ancient and traditional, invariably gives 
way before new efforts at progress. 



III. ROME'S DEGENERACY. 
1. NUMANTIA, TIBERIUS, AND CAIUS GRACCHUS. 

§ 126. In proportion as the Boman territory increased in extent, 
the heroism, the civic virtues, and the patriotic feelings on which 
Borne' s greatness had been built, disappeared. Eresh aristocratic 
families were formed from the rich and the illustrious, who, like the 
patricians of old, monopolized all honours and offices. They sought 
perpetually for new wars, the conduct of which was given to them 
alone, for the purpose of increasing the renown they inherited from 
their ancestors by victories and triumphs ; and the provinces were 
exhausted to the end that they might give themselves up to all kinds 
of pleasure and enjoyments, without lessening the wealth on which 
the power and splendour of their families were founded. As pro- 
consuls and propraetors, they conducted the government and the 
administration of justice in the conquered provinces, with a host of 
writers and subordinates, but had their own interest more in view 
than the welfare of the governed. The wealthy members of the 
knightly class undertook, as farmers-general of the revenue, for a 
certain sum they paid into the exchequer, to collect all taxes, imposts, 
and tolls, and then sought, by the most shameless exactions practised 
by their toll-collectors, receivers, and under-farmers, to idemnify 
themselves for their outlay by an enormous profit. "What the officials 
and revenue -farmers left, was appropriated by a tribe of hungry 
merchants and usurers, so that a few decads sufficed to ruin the 
prosperity of a Boman colony. It is very true, that there existed a 
law which gave the abused provincials the right of impeaching their 
oppressors on the expiration of their office ; but as the judges all 
belonged to the same wealthy and noble families, the criminal gene- 
rally escaped free, or was fined in a small amount, for the sake of 
appearances. 



92 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

Single provinces would occasionally attempt to shake off this 
oppressive yoke, and to regain their freedom by dint of arms. The 
first example of such a revolt was given by the inhabitants of the 
Pyrenean peninsula, and above all others, by the heroic race of Spain 
whose chief city was Numantia. For five years they set all the 
efforts of the Bonians at defiance, and extorted a treaty of peace and 
an acknowledgment of their independence, from a consul whom they 
had enclosed in the hollows of their mountains. Bat the senate did 
not confirm the treaty, and behaved as they had done in the affair of 
the Caudinian passes (§ 110). It was only when the younger Scipio, 
the conqueror of Carthage, put himself at the head of the army, and 
restored the abandoned energy and discipline of the camp, that 
Numantia, after a desperate defence, was compelled by 
hunger to surrender. The citizens escaped from the 
insults of the victors, by heroically killing themselves. Scipio 
destroyed the empty town, the ruins of which still look admonishingly 
down upon posterity, a memorial of a magnanimous struggle for 
freedom. 

§ 127. The new family aristocracy not only filled all the offices 
and excluded men of inferior birth from posts of honour, but they 
also possessed the whole of the arable land, inasmuch as they again 
claimed an exclusive right to the common lands, and got the smaller 
farms into their hands by purchase, usury, chicanery, and sometimes 
even by violence. By these means, the greatest inequality of pro- 
perty was produced. The class of free husbandmen, upon which the 
ancient strength, honesty, and military virtue of Home was established, 
disappeared entirely; whilst the nobles got possession of immense 
estates, which they had cultivated by hosts of slaves, who had been 
made prisoners in war. Numbers of impoverished tenants, who had 
been driven from their houses and farms by hard-hearted landlords, 
wandered through the land, a picture of misery and distress. 

In the midst of this state of things, the noble tribune of the people, 
Tiberius Gracchus, (son of Cornelia, daughter of the great 
Scipio Africanus) presented himself as the defender of op- 
pressed poverty, by proposing a renewal of the agrarian law of Licinius 
Stolo (§ 107), which enacted that no one should possess more than 500 
acres of the public land, and that the remainder should be distributed to 
necessitous families in small lots, as their own property. Upon this, the 
nobles raised a dreadful storm, and prevaded upon another tribune to 
oppose the measure. According to the Boman code, no proposal 
could become law unless all the ten tribunes were unanimous. It was 
owing to this, that Gracchus allowed himself to be seduced into the 
illegal course of getting his refractory colleague deposed by the 
people, and thus violating the sanctity of the tribunitial dignity. 
This afforded his adversaries ground for the suspicion that Gracchus 



HISTORY OF ROME. 93 

was meditating the overthrow of the constitution, for the purpose of 
assuming the kingly authority. He lost the favour of the misguided 
people, and was killed in the Capitol, together with 300 of his adher- 
ents, during a new election of tribunes. The people discovered their 
delusion when it was too late, and erected a statue in honour of their 
high-spirited champion. 

§ 128. This result did not deter the younger and more 

able brother, Caius Gracchus, ten years afterwards, from 
motioning anew for the agrarian law, and, in connexion with it, for a 
corn law, (by which deliveries of corn were to be made to the poorer 
citizens for a moderate price,) and other popular measures. His 
great eloquence and his philanthropic exertions gained him a power- 
ful party among the lower class of the people, whose immediate dis- 
tress he sought to alleviate by the making of roads and public works. 
But when, at the instigation of his impetuous friend, Fulvius Flaccus, 
he proposed that the right of Roman citizenship should be extended 
to the allies, the nobles became alarmed and tried to destroy him. A 
dreadful combat took place at one of the popular assemblies between 
the aristocratic party, with the consul Opimius at their head, and the 
adherents of Gracchus and Fulvius. The latter were defeated : Tul- 
vius, with 3000 of his companions, were killed and their bodies 
thrown into the Tiber. Gracchus fled into a wood on the other side 

of the river, and commanded a slave to thrust a sword 

B.C. 121. . . 

into his bosom. Their laws and institutions were an- 
nulled, and their adherents punished with death, imprisonment, and 
banishment. The aristocracy were now, more than ever, the rulers of 
the republic. 



2. THE TIMES OE MARIUS AND SYLLA, 
THE JUGUJRTHINE WAR. B.C. 112—106. 

§ 129. The aristocrats disgraced their government by avarice and 
corruption, and renounced all sentiments of honour and justice. 
Jugurtha, the grandson of Masinissa of JSTumidia, a cunning and 
ambitious man, and experienced in war, trusting to the depravity of 
morals and the corruption prevalent in Rome, put to death the two 
sons of his uncle, who had been made co-heirs with himself, seized 
upon their states, which had been conferred upon them by the Ro- 
mans, and succeeded, by dint of bribing the most influential senators, 
in retaining possession of his plunder, and heaping crime upon crime 
with impunity. "When at length the senate were compelled, by the 
indignation of the people, to send an army into Africa, the Numidian 
king actually succeeded in producing such enervation and looseness 
of discipline among the troops, by bribery and seduction, that they 
were defeated at the first attack, and obliged to pass under the yoke. 



94 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

This disgrace produced the greatest exasperation in Rome, so that 
the senate were compelled to adopt more stringent measures, in order 
to appease the discontent of the people, and conciliate the outraged 
sentiment of justice, by the punishment of the oifender. They 
accordingly dispatched the upright Metellus, with fresh 
troops, into Africa. Metellus restored the discipline of 
the army, and brought back the military renown of the Romans by 
successful engagements and conquests. But the people were so em- 
bittered against the aristocracy, that they resolved to deprive them of 
the government by any means. For this purpose, they required an 
intrepid leader, and the aspiring and ambitious C. Marius presented 
himself, a man of obscure condition, who was at that time serving as 
lieutenant in the army of Metellus, and who joined courage, the 
talents of a general, and rude military virtue, to rough manners, 
hatred of the nobles, and contempt for their cultivation and refine- 
ment. Disgusted at the aristocratic haughtiness of his 

B.C. 107. . 

commander, Marius returned to Rome, where he was 
chosen consul by the popular party, and entrusted with the conduct 
of the Jugurthine war. Jugurtha, with all his cunning and inventive 
genius, was unable long to withstand the energetic Marius and his 
army, now hardened by severe discipline. He was conquered, and 
fled to the faithless Bocchus, king of Mauritania ; but was delivered 
up by him to the shrewd and dexterous lieutenant L. Corn. Sylla, 
and led in triumph to Rome, where he was starved to death in 
prison. 

§ 130. Ctmbki akd Teuto^tes. — Marius had not yet concluded 
the Jugurthine war, when the Cimbri and Teutones appeared on the 
borders of the Roman empire. They were a northern people of 
Germanic origin, and gigantic stature and strength, who had left 
their country with their wives, children, and all their property, to 
seek for a new habitation. They were clad in iron coats of mail and 
the skins of beasts ; they bore shields the height of a man, with long 
swords and heavy maces. They first defeated the Romans 
in a bloody battle in Carinthia, passed through Gaul, 
devastating and plundering, and within four years cut to pieces five 
consular armies on the banks of the Rhone and the lake of Geneva. 
Marius, whom the Romans, against the law, had elected five succes- 
sive times to the consulate, came forward as deliverer. With his 
army, hardened by the labours of digging and hewing, he defeated 
the Teutones in a bloody engagement at Aquae Sextiae, 
(Aix in Provence) in South Gaul. In the meanwhile, 
the Cimbri, in a separate body, had penetrated through the Tyrol and 
the valley of the Adige, into Upper Italy ; bat when there, had care- 
lessly given themselves up to the pleasures afforded by the rich 
country, till they suffered a similar frightful overthrow on the plains 



HISTORY OF ROME. 95 

near Vercellae, from Marius, who had united himself with his 
colleague Lutatius Catulus. The courage of these Grermans, who 
killed themselves and their children, to prevent their being reduced 
to slavery, made the Romans tremble. 

§ 131. The social wae. — A sixth consulate rewarded 

B.C. 100. 

Marius, the saviour of Italy, the pride and hope of the 
popular party. By his assistance, this party again gained the supe- 
riority, which induced the aristocracy to array themselves around 
Corn. Sylla, a politic and ambitious man, and versed in war, who 
united in himself the cultivation and love of art of the nobles, with 
their vices and excesses. Prom this time two powerful parties, the 
democrats under Marius, and the aristocrats under Sylla, stood 
opposed in arms to each other. The former endeavoured to strengthen 
their ranks by attracting thither the allies, and for this purpose held 
out to them the prospect of the Roman citizenship. When this was 
not conceded, the disappointed party took up arms for the purpose 
of freeing themselves from Rome, or of compelling the cession of the 

refused privileges. This occasioned the perilous social 

B c go 33 r o r 

war. All the tribes of Sabelline origin, the warlike 
Samnites and Marsians at their head, renounced allegiance to the 
Romans, formed an Italian confederation, and declared Corfinium, 
which was also called Italica, chief city of the new alliance. Veteran 
armies marched into the field. In Rome the people put on mourning, 
armed the manumitted slaves, and conferred the privileges of Roman 
citizenship upon the Latins, Etruscans, and Umbrians, who had 
remained faithful, to prevent their joining with the others. The 
Romans were successful, after many changes of fortune and 
many bloody engagements, in gradually mastering their opponents. 
But the ferment was still so dangerous, that they thought it 
advisable, to prevent a fresh insurrection, by conferring the rights of 
citizenship upon the whole of the allies. They nevertheless restricted 
the elective rights of the new citizens. 

§ 132. The eibst wae, against Mithkidates. — The allies were 
scarcely appeased, before the Romans were threatened from the East, 
by an enemy as sagacious as he was bold, — Mithridates, king of 
Pontus, on the Black Sea. Like Hannibal, an enemy of the Romans, 
this warlike jmnce, who was a good linguist, endeavoured to unite the 
Grecian and Asiatic states in a vast confederacy, and to free them 
from the Roman dominion. By his orders, all the Roman subjects 
(togati) in Western Asia, 80,000 in number, were put to death in 
one frightful day of slaughter. At the same time he seized upon 
some countries in alliance with the Romans, and sent an army into 
Greece to protect Athens, Bceotia, and other states that had joined 
him. Hereupon the Roman senate gave the command 
against Mithridates to Sylla, who had distinguished him- 



9G THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

self in the social war, and been rewarded by the consulate. But 
Marius envied his opponent this Asiatic campaign, and procured a 
resolution of the people by which he himself was appointed to con- 
duct the Mithridatic war. Sylla, who was with his army in Lower 
Italy, now marched upon Eome, had Marius and eleven of his con- 
federates outlawed as traitors to their country, and adopted proper 
measures for the preservation of peace. He nevertheless be- 
haved with moderation, that he might be able to commence the cam- 
paign against Mithridates as soon as possible. Marius, after multi- 
tudinous dangers and adventures, escaped over the marshes of Min- 
turnoe into Africa. 

§ 133. The first civil war. — Sylla now passed over into Greece, 
stormed Athens, that expiated its revolt by a frightful 
effusion of blood, seized upon the treasures in the temple 
of Delphi, and overthrew the generals of the king of Pontus in two 
engagements. He then marched through Macedonia and Thracia 
into Asia Minor, and compelled Mithridates to a peace, by which 
Eome not only recovered her dominion over the whole of Western 
Asia, but was indemnified for the expenses of the war by the pay- 
ment of a large sum of money, and the cession of the Pontic fleet. 
The revolted towns and districts were severely punished in their 
property. 

In the mean time, Marius had returned from the ruins of Carthage 
back again into Italy ; and surrounding himself with a band of 
desperate men, had marched to the gates of Eome in conjunction 
with the democratic leaders, Cinna and Sertorius. The city, weakened 
by famine and dissension, was compelled to surrender. Upon which, 
Marius gave free course to his thirst for vengeance. Troops of rude 
soldiers marched, plundering and slaughtering, through the streets of 
the capital ; the heads of the aristocratic party, including the most 
renowned and respected senators and consuls, were murdered, their 
houses plundered and destroyed, their estates confiscated, and then' 
dead bodies given to the dogs, and the fowls of the air. After the 
gratification of his vengeance, Marius had himself chosen 
consul for the seventh time, but died a few months after,, 
from the effects of excitement and a dissolute life. 

§ 134. In the year 83 B.C., Sylla landed in Italy after the termi- 
nation of the first Mithridatic war, and marched, with the support of 
the aristocracy, upon Eome. In Lower Italy he defeated the demo- 
cratic consuls in numerous engagements, drove the younger Marius 
to self-destruction iu the strong city of Prameste, by the close siege 
be laid to the place, and in a murderous battle before the gates of 
Eome, annihilated the Marian party and the rebellious Samnites, 
8000 of whom he slaughtered before the eyes of the trembling 
senate. The civil war had already cost the lives of 100,000 men, 



HISTORY OF ROME. 97 

when Sylla (surnained the Fortunate), for the purpose of completing 

his triumph, made public his proscriptions, upon which were written 

the names of the Marian party who were to be killed and plundered. 

Hereupon all the ties of blood, of friendship, of dependence and piety, 

were torn asunder : sons were armed against their parents, and 

slaves against their masters ; informations were rewarded ; terror 

and corruption of morals were every where prevalent. Upon this, 

Sylla, who was named dictator for an indefinite period, proclaimed 

the Cornelian law, by which the whole power of the government fell 

into the hands of the aristocracy, and the influence of the tribunes 

was destroyed. After the conclusion of these arrangements, Sylla 

retired to his estate, where he shortly after died of a 
b.c. 78. 

frightful distemper. 

3. THE TIMES OE CNEIUS POMPEY, AND M. TULLIUS CICERO. 

§ 135. SykVs death did not bring back repose to the disturbed 
state. The outlawed and persecuted Marians assembled themselves 
around the brave and upright democratic leader, Sertorius, and 
fought against the Roman armies in Spain with fortune and success. 
It was not until Sertorius had been assassinated by his envious 
associates, that Pompey, who whilst yet a youth, had joined himself to 
Sylla, and was now regarded as the head of the aristocratic party, 
succeeded in overpowering the rebels. His mild and 
placable character, and his courteous and popular bearing, 
rendered him an admirable mediator between contending factions. 
§ 136. When Pompey returned to Italy from Spain, he encoun- 
tered a new enemy — the rebellious slaves. Seventy 
gladiators had fled, in Capua, from the scourge of their 
task-masters, broken open the slave prisons in Lower Italy, and 
exhorted the inmates to fight for their liberties. Their numbers soon 
increased to 70,000. The valiant Thracian, Spartacus, was at their 
head. Their intention at first was to return to their homes ; but 
after they had overthrown two Roman armies that opposed their 
passage, they entertained the hope of destroying the Roman power, 
and revenging themselves of the injuries they had received. The 
danger of the Romans was great. But dissension and want of mili- 
tary discipline produced a division among the slaves, and 
led to uncombined movements, so that the consul, M. 
Crassus, succeeded in subduing their ill-armed bands in detail. After 
the bloody fight on the banks of the Silarus, in which Spartacus 
fell, after an heroic contest, the remainder marched into Upper Italy, 
where they were utterly destroyed by Pompey. 

§ 137. Pompey rendered his name even more illustrious in Asia, 
b.c. 67. where he brought the war against the pirates, and the 

b.c 74—55. second Mithridatic war, to a conclusion, than in the 

H 



98 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

expedition against the slaves. In the sterile mountain regions on the 
south of Asia Minor, lived a daring race of freebooters, who disturbed 
the whole Mediterranean by piracy, visited the coasts and islands 
with plunder and desolation, dragged off noble Eonians as prisoners, 
for the purpose of exacting a heavy ransom, and interrupted trade 
and commerce. Hereupon, Pompey was invested with the most 
unlimited dictatorial power over all seas, coasts, and islands. With 
a splendidly equipped fleet and army he cleared in three months the 
whole Mediterranean from the pirates, subdued the towns and for- 
tresses in their own country, and settled many of the inhabitants in 
the newly-built town, Pompeiopolis. 

§ 138. In the mean time, Mithridates, encouraged by Rome's 
internal disturbances, had begun a fresh war. He had already laid 
siege to the rich inland town of Cyzicus, which was favoured by the 
Romans, when Lucullus fell upon him and gave him such an over- 
throw that he retreated in haste to his kingdom of Pontus; and when 
this also fell a prey to the victor, sought for aid and protection from 
his son-in-law, Tigranes, king of Armenia. But Lucullus defeated 

the enormous host of the Armenian king in the neigh- 
b.c. 69. 

bourhood of his capital, Tigranocerta, and was already 

making preparations for overthrowing the whole empire, and extending 

the Roman dominions as far as Parthia, when the legions refused 

obedience to their general. Upon this, Lucullus retired to his wealth 

and his pleasure gardens, and Pompey united the command of the 

Armenio-Pontic armv to his other dignities. He con- 
b.c. 66. 

quered Mithridates, who had assembled fresh forces, in a 

night engagement on the Euphrates, reduced the Armenian king to 
homage and submission, and then put an end to the rule of the 
Seleucida? in Syria. Mithridates, deprived of the greater part of his 
territories, and despairiug of a successful issue, destroyed himself. 
After Pompey, at his own pleasure, had disposed of the conquered 
lands in Asia, in such a way that the Roman empire was enlarged by 
three provinces, and some of the more distant lands had been ceded 
to tributary kings, he returned to Rome, where he held a public 
entry of two days, and filled the treasury with enormous wealth. 

§ 139. A short time before this, M. Tullius Cicero, Pompey' s 
friend and the companion of his thoughts, had acquired the honour- 
able title of father of his country. Cicero, born in a provincial town, 
and of citizen parents, had so distinguished himself by his talents, 
his industry, and his irreproachable life, that although ignoble (novus 
homo) he obtained the consulate. He had devoted himself in Athens 
and Rhodes with such zeal and success to the sciences of the Greeks, 
and especially to eloquence and philosophy, that he might be com- 
pared, both as a statesman and an orator, to Demosthenes, and had 
composed profound works on rhetoric and philosophy. Though vain, 



HISTORY OF ROME. 99 

boastful, and weak, he possessed civic virtue, patriotism, and a strong 
sense of justice. 

During his consulate, Catiline, a man of noble family, but 
disgraced by an infamous life, and loaded with debts, formed a con- 
spiracy with certain other Romans of desperate fortunes, the objects 
of which were, to murder the consuls, to set fire to the city, to 
overthrow the constitution, and in the confusion to seize upon the 
government by the aid of the soldiers of Sylla and the populace. 
But the vigdant consul Cicero had baffled this atrocious project. By 
his four orations against Catiline, he unmasked the dissembling villain 
in the senate, and reduced him to fly into Etruria, where he met with 
his death in a courageous defence against the consular army. His 
confederates were put to a violent death in prison. 

4. THE TIMES OE JULIUS C^ISAR. 

§ 140. The triumvirate. — Sylla' s fortune excited ambitious 
men to imitate it. Every one sought to be first, and to rule the state 
at his pleasure. But whdst Pompey, who was now in possession of 
almost kingly authority, was reposing upon the laurels of his .renown, 
in the full enjoyment of his happiness and prosperity, he was gra- 
dually overtaken by his great competitor, Julius Caesar. This man 
united talents of the most varied character, so that he was not less 
distinguished as a writer and orator, than as a general and soldier. 
His liberality gained him the favour of the people, and his ambition 
urged him to great deeds. To make himself a match for the old 
republican party, at the head of which stood the eccentric M. Porcius 
Cato, Caesar formed an alliance with Pompey and Crassus, 
called the triumvirate (league of three men), in which 
they pledged themselves to mutually assist each other. Erom this 
time, these three men ruled the state without troubling themselves 
farther about the senate. In a short time, Caesar had the 
government of Gaul, in which he had a long war to conduct, 
transferred to himself. That he might not be disturbed in his undertak- 
ings, he renewed the triumvirate in a meeting that was held at Lucca. 
By this means, the government of Gaul was again continued to him for 
five years. Pompey received Spain as his province, but governed it by 
means of his legates, whdst he himself exercised a dictatorial power 
in Borne. Crassus, the richest man in Borne, to gratify his avarice, 
chose Syria with its riches ; but was overthrown by the Parthians in 
the plains of Mesopotamia, and killed in the flight. His more 
valiant son, and almost the whole of the army, died on the field of 
battle. The Boman ensigns fell into the hands of the enemy. 

§ 141. Cjssar's wars in Gaul.' — The Celts, a people 

divided into many states and tribes, were the ancient 

inhabitants of Gaul (Erance) and Helvetia (Switzerland). The 

h 2 



100 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

southern part of this Gaul had already become a Roman province 
(hence Provence), when the Helvetii embraced the project of leaving 
their sterde mountains, and settling themselves in its south-Avestern 
portion. The Romans would not permit this, and Csesar in conse- 
quence marched into Gaul. He overthrew the Helvetii in a battle, 
compelled them to return to their burnt villages and desolated coun- 
try, and reduced them to pay tribute. He then subdued the German 
leader, Ariovistus, who by means of his hardy troops had severely 
oppressed the Sequani and iEqui who were dwelling in eastern Gaul, 
and obliged him to return again to his trans-Rhenish country. After 
Caesar had subdued the Belgi and other Gaulish tribes, he twice 
crossed the Rhine for the purpose of terrifying the warlike inhabit- 
ants of the rude and woody Germany, and preventing their hostde 
attacks upon Gaul. It is to this undertaking that Ave owe the first 
short description of our country, in Caesar's Commentaries on the 
Gallic war. But the Roman general never thought of making per- 
manent conquests, either in Germany or Britain, on the coasts of 
which he twice landed. After a few engagements with the skin-clad 
inhabitants of the British islands, he sailed back again for the purpose 
of completely subjecting the Gauls. For this restless and fickle 
people were perpetually revolting and taking up arms when Caesar 
was employed in another quarter. It was not till he had 
put down the last general insurrection, at Alesia, in Bur- 
gundy, that he succeeded in gradually reducing the whole country as 
far as the Rhine, and converting it into a province of the Roman 
empire. 

§ 142. The second civil war. — In the meanwhile the 
rage of party had grown in Rome to the greatest excess, 
and murder and plunder were matters of daily occurrence. This 
induced the senate and the old republicans to attach themselves 
entirely to Pompey, and to place the consulate at his disposal. Pom- 
pey employed this vast power to depress Csesar, of whose military 
renown he had become jealous. At his instigation, a command was 
sent to Caesar from the senate at the termination of the war in Gaid, 
to lay down his command and to quit his army. Two tribunes of the 
people (Curio and Antonius) Avho opposed this resolution, and de- 
manded that Pompey should also give up his power, were driven out 
of the city ; they fled to Caesar's camp and summoned him to step 
forward as the defender of the outraged privileges of the people. 

After a little hesitation, Caesar crossed the boundary 
ji c 4!) . 

stream of the Rubicon and advanced upon Rome. Pom- 
pey, aroused Avhen it was too late from his indolence and careless 
security, did not venture to await his reproach in the city : he 
hastened to Brundusium with a fcAV troops and a great train of 
senators and nobles ; and when the victor approached the place, 



HISTORY OF ROME. 10 1 

escaped across the Ionian Sea into Epirus. Caesar did not pursue 
hint, but fell back upon Rome, where he took possession of the trea- 
sury, and then proceeded to Spain. Here he compelled the army of 
Pompey to a capitulation, the result of which was, that the generals 
and officers were allowed to depart, and the greater part of the com- 
mon soldiers joined the victor. "When Caesar on his return, after a 
close siege, had reduced Massilia, a town that wished to remain neu- 
tral, and punished it severely in its possessions and liberties, he again 
marched to Rome, had himself appointed dictator and consul for the 
following year, and adopted many serviceable measures. He then passed 
over the Ionian Sea for the purpose of making head against Pompey. 
The decisive battle of Pharsalus, in the plains of Thessalv, 

"R c dfi 'I: J > 

was soon fought, in which Caesar's veteran troops gained 
a splendid victory over an army of double their numbers. Pompey, 
with a few faithful followers, fled across Asia Minor into Egypt, 
where, instead of a hospitable reception, he met with his death by 
assassination. Ptolemy, in the hope of obtaining the favour of 
Caesar, ordered the conquered Pompey to be killed on his landing 
at Pelusium, and his dead body to be cast unburied upon the 
shore. 

§ 143. Caesar's triumphs. — Shortly after, Caesar also arrived in 
Italy. He shed tears of compassion over Pompey' s death, and 
refused the instigator of the murder his promised reward. Eor when 
he was chosen umpire between Ptolemy and his beautiful sister 
Cleopatra, in a dispute concerning the throne, he decided in favour 
of the latter, and by this means got involved in a war with the king 
and the people of Egypt that retained him for nine months in Alex- 
andria, and reduced him to great peril. It was only when fresh 
troops had arrived, and Ptolemy had been drowned after an unsuccess- 
ful engagement on the Nile, that he could place the government in 
the hands of Cleopatra (by whose charms he had been enchained), 
and proceed to fresh conquests. The rapid victory that he gained by 
the terror of his name over the son of Mithridates has been rendered 
immortal by the memorable letter that announced the event : " I 
came, saw, conquered" (Veni, vidi, vici). After a short delay in 
Pome, he passed over into Africa, where the friends of republican 
government and the adherents of Pompey had collected a vast army. 
Here Caesar gained the bloody battle of Thapsus, where 
the hopes of the republicans were destroyed. Thousands 
fell in the field ; many of the survivors perished by their own hands, 
and among them, the high-spirited Cato, who put himself to death in 
Utica with calm composure. A magnificent triumph of four days 
awaited the victor on his return to Rome, which he, however, soon 
quitted for the purpose of attacking the last of his enemies, who had 
assembled themselves around the sons of Pompey. The last rem- 



102 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

milts of the friends of Ponipey and the republic were 

destroyed in the frightful battle near Munda, where they 

fought with the courage of desperation. One of the sons was killed 

in the flight, the survivor followed the life of a pirate, till he fell by 

the hand of an assassin. 

§ 144. Cjesar's death. — Caesar now returned, as chief and ruler 
of the Roman empire, to the capital, where he was saluted as " Father 
of the country," and elected dictator for life. He sought to win the 
soldiers' and people by liberality, and the nobles by offices : he en- 
couraged trade and agriculture, embellished the city with temples, 
theatres, and public places, improved the calendar, and forwarded all 
kinds of good and useful projects ; but his evident attempts to gain 
the title and dignity of king induced some fanatical friends of liberty 
to' engage in a conspiracy. His friend and flatterer, Marc Antony, 
offered him the kingly diadem during a feast, and despite the feigned 
distaste with which Caesar rejected it, his secret satisfaction was 
easily discernible. At the head of the conspiracy stood the high- 
minded enthusiast for liberty, M. Junius Brutus, the friend of Csesar, 
and the severe republican, Caius Cassius. In despite of every warn- 
ing, Csesar held a meeting of the senate during the ides of March, in 
the hall of Pompey. It was here that, with the exclama- 
tion, " Et tu, Brute I '-' he fell, pierced by twenty-three 
daggers, at the feet of the statue of his former opponent. 

5. THE LAST TEAES OF THE REPUBLIC. 

§ 145. It was soon apparent that the idea of freedom only existed 
among a few men of cultivated minds, but was quenched in the hearts 
of the populace. The first enthusiasm for the newly-acquired free- 
dom was soon changed into hatred and invectives against the mur- 
derers of the dictator, when Marc Antony, in an artful speech at the 
funeral of Caesar, extolled his merits and services, and ordered pre- 
sents of money to be distributed amoug the poor. The senate, on the 
other hand, were for the most part favourable to the conspirators, and 
conferred upon some of them the government of provinces ; and when 
Antony attempted to take possession of one of these provinces by 
force, Cicero obtained by his Philippine Orations that the senate 
declared him an enemy of the country. The senate, at the same time, 
gave offence to Octavius, the son of Caesar's sister, who was then 
nineteen years of age, and who, as heir of his uncle's name, (Caesar 
Octavianus, afterwards Augustus,) had all the old soldiers on his side. 
Octavianus in consequence, raised the standard of Caesar's vengeance, 
and formed a second triumvirate with Antony and Lepi- 
dus on a little island of the river Rhenus, near Bologna. 
New prescriptions took place, which proved particularly fatal to the 
knightly and senatorial ranks. The most deserving and illustrious 



HISTORY OF ROME. 103 

men fell beneath the blows of assassins, the clearest relations of blood, 
of friendship, and of piety were torn asunder. Among the victims of 
Antony was Cicero, who was killed during an attempt at flight. His 
head and his right hand were placed upon the rostrum. 

§ 146. After the possessors of power in Italy had satiated their 
vengeance, they marched against the republicans, who had established 
their camp in Macedonia, under the command of Brutus and Cassius. 
It was here, in the plains of Philippi, that a decisive 
double engagement took place, in which Cassius was 
obliged to yield to Antony, whilst Brutus repulsed the legions of 
Octavius. But when Cassius, deceived by false intelligence, had 
over-hastily fallen upon his own sword, and the triumvirs, twenty 
days afterwards, renewed the fight with united forces, Brutus, " the 
last of the Romans," was forced to succumb, and fell, like Cassius, 
upon his own sword. His wife, Portia (Cato's daughter), destroyed 
herself with live coals, and many champions of liberty died by their 
own hands ; so that Philippi became the grave of the republic. 
Henceforth, the contest was no longer for freedom but for empire. 
The victors divided the Roman territory between them ; Antony 
chose the east, Octavius the west ; the feeble Lepidus, who at first 
received the province of Africa, but who never possessed much influ- 
ence, was soon robbed of his share. 

§ 147. But whilst the luxurious Antony was leading a voluptuous 
life at Cleopatra's court in Alexandria, the shrewd Augustus and his 
high-spirited admiral Agrippa, were winning the affections of the 
Soman people by liberal donations and diversions, rewarding the 
soldiers by a distribution of lands, and keeping up the discipline of 
the fleet and army. At length, when Antony lavished Roman blood 
and Roman honour in an unsuccessful campaign against the Parthians, 
married Cleopatra, and gave the provinces of Rome to her son, the 
senate, at the instigation of Octavius, deprived him of all his honours 
and declared war against Cleopatra. East and west stood 
opposed in arms. But the sea-fight of Actium, despite 
the superiority of the Egyptians, was decided in favour of Octavius. 
Antony and Cleopatra fled. But when the victor approached the 
gates of Alexandria, the former fell on his sword, and Cleopatra 
finding that her charms produced no impression on the new poten- 
tate, destroyed herself by the poison of two vipers. 
Egypt became the first province of the Roman Empire. 



IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
1. THE TIMES OF C^SAR OCTAYIANUS AUGUSTUS. 

from U ?o US B c. § 148 - The w° od y civil war had ^pt awa y aU tne 

to a.d. 14. men of ability and patriotism; and the crowd that was 



10-1; THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

left demanded nothing but food and entertainment, and forgot 
freedom and civil virtue in the enjoyment of the moment. This 
rendered it easy to the dexterous Augustus to change the Roman 
republic into a monarchy, but he yielded so far to the prejudices of 
the Romans, as not to assume the title of king, or master, and to retain 
the republican names and forms, with the appellation of Caesar, 
whilst he gradually got all the offices and privileges of the senate and 
people placed in his own hands, and had them renewed from time to 
time. He united a profound understanding and talents for govern- 
ment, with clemency, temperance, and constancy, and as he was a 
master in the art of dissimulation, and knew how to turn the failings 
of men to advantage, he gained his ends more surely than his greater 
uncle, Caesar. It was under Augustus that the Roman empire pos- 
sessed the greatest power abroad, and the highest cultivation at home. 
It extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates, and from the 
Donau and Rhine, to the Atlas and Falls of the Nile; art and literature 
flourished to such a degree, that the reign of Augustus was called the 
golden age. Vast military roads, provided with milestones, connected 
the twenty-five provinces Avith Rome, and facilitated intercourse ; 
magnificent aqueducts and canals attested the enterprising spirit of 
the Roman people ; Rome itself was adorned with temples, theatres, 
and baths, and so much changed, that Augustus was able to say, that he 
found Rome brick, and left it marble. The temple which Agrippa 
consecrated to all the gods (the Pantheon), is still one of the greatest 
ornaments of the eternal city. Augustus and his friend Maecenas, 
Pollio, and others, Avere the favourers of art and literature, and the 
patrons of poets and authors. The first public hbrary was founded 
on the Palatine hill ; the citizens, who now no longer marched to the 
wars, and who had relinquished the conduct of state affairs to Caesar 
and his ministers, employed their leisure in reading and writing, left 
actions for words, and performing for thinking ; it was by this means 
that polished manners soon prevailed among all classes. 

§ 149. Roman literature. — Virgil, Horace, and Ovid claim the 
first place among the poets that adorned the Augustan age. The first 
composed the iEneid, an heroic poem on the model of Homer (§ 38), 
pastoral poetry, and a didactic poem on agriculture; Horace, to whom 
his patron Maecenas presented a small Sabine farm, wrote odes, 
satires, and humorous epistles, in Avhich he exhibits his cheerful views 
of life in a Avitty and engaging manner; Ovid, the clever Avriter of 
mythological stories (Metamorphoses), was banished by Augustus to 
the rude steppes of the Caspian Sea, from whence he Avrote letters 
of complaint to his distant home. 

Among historians, the most celebrated are Sallustius, who, in his 
account of the Avars against Jugurtha and Catiline, gives a true but 
frightful picture of the corrupt times ; and Titus Livius, the tutor of 



HISTORY OF ROME. 105 

the grandson of Augustus, who wrote a complete history of Rome, in 
142 books ; of which only thirty-five are preserved. We possess a 
biography of distinguished men, by his contemporary Cornelius 
Nepos. The Romans took the Greeks for their models in art and 
literature, but fell far short of their masters. 

2. THE STKUGGXES OP THE &EEMAJSTS EOB, EIBEETT. 

§ 150. About the time that the Saviour of the world was brought 
forth in lowliness and humility in Bethlehem, in the land of Judaea, to 
bring the joyful news of salvation to the lost race of man, our fore- 
fathers were engaged in a severe struggle with the Eomans for the 
preservation of their liberties and national customs. Drusus, the 
brave son-in-law of Augustus, was the first Roman who made any 
conquests on the right bank of the Rhine. He undertook many 
successful campaigns against the tribes in alliance with the Suevi, 
between the Rhine and the Elbe, and attempted to secure the land 
by intrenchments and fortifications. Being killed in the flower of 
his years, by a fall from his horse during his return home, his brother 
Tiberius completed the conquest of Western Germany, rather by dint 
of skilfully conducted negotiations with the disunited Germans, than 
by force of arms ; whereupon, the country between the Rhine and the 
Weser was erected into a Roman province. Foreign customs, lan- 
guage, and laws already threatened to destroy German nationality ; 
German soldiers already fought in the ranks of the Romans, and 
prided themselves on foreign marks of distinction, when the insolence 
and indiscretion of the governor Quintilius Varus, aroused the slum- 
bering patriotism of the people. Several tribes united themselves in 
a confederacy, under the guidance of Hermann (Arminius), the 
valiant prince of the Cherusci, for the purpose of throwing off the 
foreign yoke. It was in vain that Segestus, whose daughter Thu- 
snelda had been carried off and married by Hermann, against the 
consent of her father, warned the careless governor. Varus marched 
with three legions and several auxiliaries, through the Teutoburger 
forest, for the purpose of quelling an insurrection that had been pur- 
posely raised, but suffered such a defeat from the Germans under 
Hermann's command, that the defiles of the wood were covered far 
and wide with the corpses of the Romans. The eagles 
were lost, and Varus died by his own hands. Augustus, 
when he heard the news, exclaimed in despair, " Varus, give me back 
my legions ! " 

§ 151. Upon the death of Augustus, in his 76th year, 
at Nola, in Lower Italy, Drusus, the valiant son of Ger- 
manicus, again crossed the Rhine, ravaged the lands of the Chatti 
(Hesse), buried the bleaching remains of the Romans in the Teuto- 
burger forest, and carried off into captivity Thusnelda, the high- 



106 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

spirited wife of Hermann, whom her treacherous father had given up 
to the enemy. But although he defeated the Cherusci and their 
allies in two engagements, and at the same time pressed Germany 
closely by sea, the Koman dominion was never firmly or permanently 
established on the right bank of the Ehine. Storms destroyed the 
fleet, and a pathless country and the swords of the Germans brought 
the army to the brink of destruction ; and when at length Gerinani- 
cus (to whose noble wife, Agrippina, the town of Cologne owes its 
prosperity), was recalled by his jealous uncle, Tiberius, and shortly 
after, met with his death by poison in Syria, the Germans were no 
longer disturbed by the ambition of the Romans. But the Lower 
German confederation of the Cherusci now turned its arms against 
the Upper German confederation of the Marcomanni, at the head of 
which stood Marbodius. This gave the Romans the opportunity of 
embroiling Germany from the south. Marbodius fell into the power 
of the Romans, who kept him for eighteen years at Ravenna as their 
pensioner ; Hermann was killed by envious friends. His deeds sur- 
vived in song, and our own age has erected a colossal statue, on the 
Teuthill at Detmold, in joyful commemoration of the deliverer of 
Germany. 

TACITUS OX THE MANNEES AND CUSTOMS OF THE GEBHANS. 

§ 152. About 100 years after Augustus, the great historian Tacitus, 
after having pourtrayed the events of the Roman empire in his History 
and Annals, embraced the resolution of describing the manners and 
customs of the German tribes, and presenting them as models to his 
degenerate country. Although the work remained a mere sketch, it 
is to this resolution that we are indebted for the first accurate in- 
formation respecting our native land. We learn from it, that Germany 
was inhabited by numerous independent tribes, sometimes united and 
" sometimes at war with each other, who were perpetually changing 
their places of residence, in obedience to an innate wandering impulse. 

"War and the chase were their chief employments ; they built 
neither towns nor strongholds ; their huts and farms were scattered 
about in the midst of their grounds, a peaceful life behind stone Avails 
agreed neither with their love of liberty nor their passion for war. 
They united purity of morals, hospitality, good faith, and honesty, 
respect for women, and reverence for the marriage tie, to the external 
advantages of lofty stature, beauty of person, strength, and courage. 
The only vices attributed to them are a disposition to drunkenness 
and gambling. 

3. THE CiESAES OE THE AUGUSTAN EACE. 

§ 153. Domestic misfortunes disturbed the happiness of Augustus. 
The promising sons who sprung from the marriage of his daughter 



HISTORY OF ROME. 1Q7 

Julia with Agrippa, died in their youth ; Juha herself occasioned her 
father such distress by her profligate life that at length he banished 
her. By the intrigues of the ambitious Livia, the emperor's third 
Tiberius, Avife, the empire descended to Tiberius, the adopted son- 
a.d. 14—37. in-law of Augustus. The clemency at first displayed by 
this hypocritical prince soon gave way to his natural malevolence, 
particularly when his crafty and vicious favourite, Sejanus, assisted 
him in establishing a military despotism. He advised him to unite 
the prsetorian body-guard in a permanent camp before Eome. Here 
they soon became the oppressors of the people, raised and dethroned 
emperors, and introduced a military despotism. The assemblies of 
the people were no longer held, and the dastardly senate sunk into a 
mere tool of the despot. The frightful court of majesty, which took 
cognizance of cases of high treason, was a means of destroying every 
man of ability, inasmuch as it inflicted the punishment of death, and 
imposed fines, not only for actions, but even for words and thoughts. 
Pensioned spies undermined all faith and trust among the people, and 
destroyed every spark of freedom by terror. The misanthropical 
Tiberius, tortured by fear and the reproaches of his conscience, passed 
the last years of his life in the island of Caprese (Capri), in Lower 
Italy, where he abandoned himself to luxury and the most infamous 
pleasures, whilst Sejanus was practising every vice in Eome. "When 
the latter at length attempted to possess himself of the throne, 
the emperor sent an order to the senate to put him to death. Tibe- 
rius, sick and advanced in years, perished by a violent death on his 
estate in Lower Italy. During his reign, a dreadful earthquake 
destroyed many of the richest and most beautiful cities in Asia 
Minor. 

Caligula, § 154. His successor, Caj. Caligula, the unworthy son 

a.d. 37 — 41. f the noble Gfermanicus and the high-minded Agrippina, 
was a blood-thirsty tyrant, who took delight in signing sentences of 
death and having them executed ; a frantic spendthrift, who lavished 
money in buddings without a purpose ; an insolent boaster, who caused 
divine honours to be paid to himself, and celebrated magnificent tri- 
umphs over the Germans and Britons, whom he scarcely ever saw ; 
and a glutton, by whose riotous table enormous sums were swallowed 
up. The praetorians at length kflled the crazy tyrant, and raised his 
Claudius, uncle, the imbecde Claudius, to the throne. This emperor 
a.d. 41 — 54. wag i ec [ D y W omen and favourites, the latter, especially the 
freedmen Narcissus and Pallas, were in possession of all the oifices, 
and enriched themselves at the expense of the people, whilst his wife 
Messalina yielded herself up to every lust, and trampled morality and 
decency under foot. At length the emperor commanded her to be 
put to death, and married his ambitious and profligate niece Agrip- 
pina, who, however, soon got rid of her weak and uxorious husband 



106 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

spirited wife of Hermann, whom her treacherous father had given up 
to the enemy. But although he defeated the Cherusci and their 
allies in two engagements, and at the same time pressed Germany 
closely by sea, the Roman dominion was never firmly or permanently 
established on the right bank of the Rhine. Storms destroyed the 
fleet, and a pathless country and the swords of the G-ermans brought 
the army to the brink of destruction ; and when at length Grermani- 
cus (to whose noble wife, Agrippina, the town of Cologne owes its 
prosperity), was recalled by his jealous uncle, Tiberius, and shortly 
after, met with his death by poison in Syria, the Germans were no 
longer disturbed by the ambition of the Romans. But the Lower 
German confederation of the Cherusci now turned its arms against 
the Upper German confederation of the Marcomanni, at the head of 
which stood Marbodius. This gave the Romans the opportunity of 
embroiling Germany from the south. Marbodias fell into the power 
of the Romans, who kept him for eighteen years at Ravenna as their 
pensioner ; Hermann was killed by envious friends. His deeds sur- 
vived in song, and our oavu age has erected a colossal statue, on the 
Teuthill at Detmold, in joyful commemoration of the deliverer of 
Germany. 

TACITUS ON THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OE THE GERMANS. 

§ 152. About 100 years after Augustus, the great historian Tacitus, 
after having pourtrayed the events of the Roman empire in his History 
and Annals, embraced the resolution of describing the manners and 
customs of the German tribes, and presenting them as models to his 
degenerate country. Although the work remained a mere sketch, it 
is to this resolution that we are indebted for the first accurate in- 
formation respecting our native land. We learn from it, that Germany 
was inhabited by numerous independent tribes, sometimes united and 
' sometimes at war with each other, who were perpetually changing 
their places of residence, in obedience to an innate wandering impulse. 

War and the chase were their chief employments ; they built 
neither towns nor strongholds ; their huts and farms were scattered 
about in the midst of then grounds, a peacefid life behind stone walls 
agreed neither with their love of liberty nor their passion for war. 
They united purity of morals, hospitality, good faith, and honesty, 
respect for women, and reverence for the marriage tie, to the external 
advantages of lofty stature, beauty of person, strength, and courage. 
The only vices attributed to them are a disposition to drunkenness 
and gambling. 

3. THE CvESARS OE THE AUGUSTAN RACE. 

§ 153. Domestic misfortunes disturbed the happiness of Augustus. 
The promising sons who sprung from the marriage of his daughter 



HISTORY OF ROME. 107 

Julia with Agrippa, died in their youth ; Julia herself occasioned her 
father such distress by her profligate life that at length he banished 
her. By the intrigues of the ambitious Livia, the emperor's third 
Tiberius, wife, the empire descended to Tiberius, the adopted son- 
a.d. 14—37. in-law of Augustus. The clemency at first displayed by 
this hypocritical prince soon gave way to his natural malevolence, 
particularly when his crafty and vicious favourite, Sejanus, assisted 
him in establishing a military despotism. He advised him to unite 
the praetorian body-guard in a permanent camp before Rome. Here 
they soon became the oppressors of the people, raised and dethroned 
emperors, and introduced a military despotism. The assemblies of 
the people were no longer held, and the dastardly senate sunk into a 
mere tool of the despot. The frightful court of majesty, which took 
cognizance of cases of high treason, was a means of destroying every 
man of ability, inasmuch as it inflicted the punishment of death, and 
imposed fines, not only for actions, but even for words and thoughts. 
Pensioned spies undermined all faith and trust among the people, and 
destroyed every spark of freedom by terror. The misanthropical 
Tiberius, tortured by fear and the reproaches of his conscience, passed 
the last years of his life in the island of Capreee (Capri), in Lower 
Italy, where he abandoned himself to luxury and the most infamous 
pleasures, whilst Sejanus was practising every vice in Home. When 
the latter at length attempted to possess himself of the throne, 
the emperor sent an order to the senate to put him to death. Tibe- 
rius, sick and advanced in years, perished by a violent death on his 
estate in Lower Italy. During his reign, a dreadful earthquake 
destroyed many of the richest and most beautiful cities in Asia 
Minor. 

Caligula, § 154. His successor, Caj. Caligula, the unworthy son 

a.d. 37 — 41. f the noble Grermanicus and the high-minded Agrippina, 
was a blood-thirsty tyrant, who took delight in signing sentences of 
death and having them executed ; a frantic spendthrift, who lavished 
money in buildings without a pinpose ; an insolent boaster, who caused 
divine honours to be paid to himself, and celebrated magnificent tri- 
umphs over the GS-ermans and Britons, whom he scarcely ever saw ; 
and a glutton, by whose riotous table enormous sums were swallowed 
up. The praetorians at length killed the crazy tyrant, and raised his 
Claudius, uncle, the imbecile Claudius, to the throne. This emperor 
a.d. 41 — 54. wag i ec i D y women and favourites, the latter, especially the 
freedmen Narcissus and Pallas, were in possession of all the offices, 
and enriched themselves at the expense of the people, whilst his wife 
Messalina yielded herself up to every lust, and trampled morality and 
decency under foot. At length the emperor commanded her to be 
put to death, and married his ambitious and profligate niece Agrip- 
pina, who, however, soon got rid of her weak and uxorious husband 



108 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

by poison, for the purpose of raising the depraved Claud. Nero, her 
son by a former marriage, to the throne. 

N er0 § 155. The clemency which Nero displayed in the com- 

a.d. 54 — GR. mencement of his reign, soon gave place to the most 
exquisite cruelty. He, Avho once when he had to sign an order for 
an execution, wished that he could not write, now not only persecuted, 
put to death, and confiscated the property of every man who displayed 
the virtues of a citizen, or the mind of a Roman, but exercised his 
tyranny at the expense of his nearest relations. His step-brother, 
Germanicus, died by poison from the imperial table ; his mother was 
first sunk at sea in a ship, and when she succeeded in saving herself, 
put to death by assassins dispatched for the purpose; his virtuous 
wife, Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, found a violent death in an 
overheated bath. A conspiracy, in which the republican poet Lucan 
(whose heroic poem Pharsalia still breathes the old Roman spirit) was 
implicated, was made use of by the emperor to destroy not only Lucan, 
but his uncle Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, who had been Nero's own 
preceptor. Seneca opened his own veins. Nero, at the instigation of 
his courtiers and mistresses (Poppa?a Sabina), perpetrated the most 
shameful follies and crimes. Spectacles and riotous processions, in 
which the emperor himself, disguised as a singer and harp-player, took 
a share along with the companions of his pleasures, luxurious feasts 
and banquets, and extravagances of every description, consumed the 
revenues of the state. The despot, in the plenitude of his insolence 
and wickedness, ordered Rome to be set on fire, that he might sing 
the destruction of Troy from the battlements of his palace. To divert 
the hatred of his subjects from himself, he afterwards attributed the 
crime to the Christians, who were subjected, in consequence, to the 
most frightful persecutions. The rebuilding of the city, and Nero's 
" Golden House," on the Palatine hill, increased the oppression, till 
at length, repeated enormities induced the Spanish legion to revolt. 
As the troops under the command of Galba approached the capital, 
Nero fled to a country house, where he caused himself to be stabbed 
by one of his freedmen. 

§ 156. The house of Augustus became extinct with Nero. 
C 11 Otho Gaum was his successor. But as the avaricious old man 
Vitellius, would not gratify the rapacity of the prastorians, they 
a.d. G8— 70. p roc l a i mec l Otho emperor, and put Galba and the suc- 
cessor he had appointed to death. At the same thne, Vitellius raised 
his standard on the Rhine, marched with his legions into Italy, and 
defeated the army of his opponent on the banks of the Po. Otho, 
and several of his adherents, died by their own hands. Vitellius was 
a more glutton, who found pleasure in nothing but luxurious banquets. 
Accordingly, when Vespasian, whom the Syrian legions had proclaimed 
emperor, approached the gates of Rome, Vitellius was killed by a 



HISTORY OF ROME. 109 

troop of rude soldiers, and his body dragged with hooks into the 
Tiber. 

4. THE FLAVII AND ANTONINES. 

Vespasian, § 157. Vespasian, the first in the succession of good 

a.d. 70 — 70- emperors, restored the discipline of the army and the 
praetorians by severe measures, improved the administration of justice 
after abolishing the court of majesty, and by economy and good 
management succeeded in replenishing the treasury. At the same 
time, he embellished the city by building the Temple of Peace and the 
Amphitheatre, the gigantic remains of which (Coliseum) still excite 
the admiration of travellers, and enlarged the boundaries of the 
empire by the conquest of Judaea and Britain. 

§ 158. The tyranny of the Roman governor who ruled over the 
land of Judaea, had at last driven the people to rebellion. They 
fought with the courage of despair against the advancing legions, but 
were forced to yield to Roman superiority and take refuge in their 
capital, where they were now besieged by Vespasian's son, Titus. 
Thousands were soon carried off by famine and pestdence in the 
over-crowded city. It was in vain that the compassionate general 
made offers of pardon ; rage and fanaticism urged the Jews to a des- 
perate resistance. They defended themselves in their temple with an 
utter contempt for death, till that magnificent structure was destroyed 
by fire on the taking of the city, and death raged in every shape 
among the conquered. The complete destruction of Jeru- 
salem then took place. Among the prisoners who fol- 
lowed the triumphal car of the conqueror, was Josephus, the Jewish 
historian of this war. The triumphal arch of Titus in Rome displays 
to this day, representations of the sacred vessels of the Jews that 
were at this time conveyed to the metropolis of the world. Those 
who were left behind were exposed to grievous oppression under the 
Roman yoke. But when a heathen colony, sixty years after the 
destruction of the city, was transplanted by the emperor Adrian to 
the sacred sod of Jerusalem, (which from this time was called iElia 
Capitolina,) and a temple erected to Jupiter on the eminence once 
occupied by Solomon's temple to Jehovah, the Jews, deceived by a 
false Messiah, took up arms once more to prevent this outrage. 
After a murderous war of three years' duration, in which 
upwards of half a million of the natives were slaughtered, 
the Jews submitted to the military skill of the Romans. The sur- 
vivors left the country in crowds, the land resembled a desert, and 
the Jewish state was at an end. Since then, the Jews have been 
scattered abroad over the whole earth, but without mingling with 
other people, and faithful to their own customs, religion, and super- 
stitions. 



HO THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

§ 159. It was during the reign of Vespasian, that the high-spirited 
Agricola, father-in-law to the historian Tacitus, by whom his life has 
been written, subdued Britain as far as the highlands of Caledonia 
(Scotland), and introduced the Roman language, manners, and insti- 
tutions. Britain remained subject to the Romans for nearly four 
hundred years. The warlike energy of the people was destroyed by 
civilization, so that they were afterwards as little able to resist the 
attacks of the rude Caledonians (Picts and Scots) as the wall erected 
by Adrian proved a defence against their inroads. 
Titus, § 160. The simple and energetic Vespasian was suc- 

a.d. 79 — 81. ceeded by his son Titus, who cast off the failings and 
crimes of his youth when he ascended the throne, and became so ad- 
mirable a prince that he might have been called " the delight of man- 
kind." It was during his reign that a frightful irruption of Mount 
Vesuvius destroyed the towns of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabise. 
The inquisitive natural philosopher, the elder Pliny, lost his Life by 
the vapour produced by this eruption, as we learn from two letters 
written by his nephew, Pliny the younger, the friend and encomiast 
of the emperor Trajan, to the historian Tacitus. The exhumation of 
these buried towns, which was begun about a hundred years ago, 
more especially that of Pompeii, has been of the utmost importance 
to the knowledge of antiquity and to the artistic taste of our own day. 

§ 161. The noble Titus was unfortunately followed by his brother, 
Domitian the cruel Domitian, a gloomy and misanthropical tyrant, 
a.d. 81 — 96. w ho took pleasure in nothing but the contests of wdd- 
beasts and gladiatorial combats. "When he was at length murdered 
Nerva, a t the instigation of his wicked wife, the throne was 

a.d. 9G— 98. taken possession of by Nerva, an old senator. Nerva 
Trajan, adopted the energetic Spaniard, Trajan, who, by his govern- 

a.d. 98— 117. ment at home, and his victories abroad, deserved the sur- 
name of the best, and the glory of the greatest, of the Caesars. He 
provided for the proper administration of justice, facilitated trade and 
commerce by making new roads and harbours (Civita Vecchia), and 
embellished Rome with pubHc buddings, temples, and a new forum, 
in which he ordered the beautiful column of Trajan to be erected. 
He at the same time reduced the turbulent Dacians on the Donau, 
and established the province of Dacia ("Wallachia and Transylvania), 
which was soon peopled by Roman settlers, on the northern bank of 
the river. In the east he made war on the Parthians, conquered 
Babylon, Seleucia, and other cities, and converted Armenia and 
Mesopotamia into Roman provinces. The country between the 
sources of the Donau and the Upper Rhine, (Black Forest) was 
surrendered to settlers from Gaul and Germany, and was afterwards 
protected from hostde attacks by a ditch fortified with stakes. It was 
called Decumatland, and the ruins of numerous towns, and the anti- 



HISTORY OF ROME. \ \ \ 

quities that are dug up there, show that it must have shared in the 
civilization of its conquerors. 

§ 162. Trajan's relative and successor, ^Elius Adrianus, was more 
intent upon defending than enlarging the bounds of his empire, and 
Adrian, found greater pleasure in art and literature than in war. 

a.d.117 — 138. He was a man of great cultivation of mind, but vain, 
and open to flattery. His eagerness for knowledge, and love of art, 
induced him to take journeys of many years' duration, both into the 
East, where he Lingered in Greece, Asia, and Egypt, and into the 
"West, where he visited Gaul, Spain, Britain, and the Khine-land. 
Among the many writers, artists, and interpreters who surrounded 
the brilliant court of Adrian, the most distinguished was the Greek 
Plutarch, the author of numerous writings. His biographies, in which 
he compares together the Greek and Roman statesmen and generals, 
are especially calculated to excite admiration for the heroic deeds of 
antiquity. Adrian's love of art is borne witness to more particularly, 
by the ruins of his villa at Tivoli ; his magnificent mausoleum ; the 
castle of Adrian, at Some ; and innumerable remains of sculpture 
and building. 

Antoninus § 163. Adrian's adopted son, the simple and benevolent 

Pius, a.d. Antoninus Pius, was an ornament of the throne. He 
lir avoided war that he might devote all his care to the arts 

Marcus ° 

Aurelius, a.d. of peace. His successor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 
161 180. the philosopher, was as much distinguished in war as in 
peace. He conquered the Marcomanni on the frozen Donau, and 
drove back over the frontiers, after a long war, the German tribes 
who were their confederates. He died at Yindobona (Vienna), 
during a campaign. Marcus Aurelius was a man of simple and 
hardy habits, who when on the throne remained true to his stoic 
virtue and severity of morals (§ 91) . He promoted civilization and 
useful institutions, and the collection of reflections which he composed 
and dedicated to himself, bears witness to his noble principles and 
efforts. 

§ 164. Cultivation and moeals. — During this period, the high- 
est civilization prevailed in the Roman empire, along with the greatest 
depravity of morals. Arts and sciences were encouraged in the courts 
of the Csesars and the palaces of the wealthy, and were shared in by 
persons of all conditions. Trades and commerce flourished ; and 
prosperity and refinement were visible in the populous cities and 
elegant dwelling-houses ; establishments for education sprang up in 
Rome and the more considerable provincial towns. The ruins of 
buddings, military roads, and bridges, that we admire even at this 
day, not only in Italy, but in many provincial towns (Treves, JNlmes), 
the statues, sarcophagi, and altars with bas-reliefs and inscriptions, 
the vases of clay and bronze of elegant forms that are dug out of the 



HO THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

earth, all bear testimony to the cultivation and feeling for art existing 
among the people in the times of the Caesars. But this refinement 
was but a superficial polish ; morality, nobility of soul, and strength 
of character, were held in no estimation. The people, no longer 
invigorated by war, or the labours of the field, sunk into luxury and 
effeminacy ; they sought their gratification in the barbarous sports of 
the amphitheatre, gladiatorial combats, and the contests of wild beasts, 
and gave themselves up to a relaxing enjoyment of the luxurious 
baths, with which the city was amply provided by the emperors, for 
the purpose of withdrawing the citizens from the consideration of 
graver matters. _ It is in vain, that Persius angrily shakes the scourge 
of his stern satire over the degenerate race, and endeavours to bring 
back the ancient vigour, simplicity, and morality ;— it is in vain, that 
the witty Juvenal unveils in his sportive satire the frightful depths of 
crime and wickedness, and lashes his degenerate contemporaries ; it 
is in vain, that the waggish Greek, Lucian, in his witty and satirical 
writings, jests at all the existing conditions of life and religion, for 
the purpose of destroying what is old, and thereby making room for 
something new and better, — human counsel came too late ; nothing 
but a higher power could save the perishing world ; the help had 
already appeared, but the blinded Eomans did not recognize it, 
because it came not in the pomp of authority, but in the garment of 
humility. 

5. ROME UNDER MILITARY GOVERNMENT. 

Commodus § ^^' R° me ' s downward course commences with 

a.d. Commodus, the unworthy son of Aurelius. He was a 

180—192. barbarous tyrant, who delighted in nothing but the com- 
bats of gladiators and wild beasts, and who distressed the people in 
every way, till at length he was put to death by those around him. 
Pertinax Pertinax, his valiant successor, had a similar fate. After 

a.d. 193. his death, the insolence of the praetorians rose to such a 
height, that they put up the crown to the highest bidder. Septimius 
Septimius Severus first restrained their insolence by his inexorable 
Severus, a.d. severity, and re-established the imperial power. He was 
a rude soldier, and enlarged the empire by his conquests 
in the East, where he took Mesopotamia from the Parthians ; and 
secured Britain by new defences against the turbulent Picts and 
Scots. But he deprived the senate of their last remains of power, 
and placed his whole reliance on the army, so that he Avas the actual 
establisher of the military government. 

§ 166. The death of Septimius Severus at Eboracum (York) in 
Caracalla a.d. Britain, placed his cruel son, Caracalla, on the throne, 
211—217- who, true to his father's teaching, honoured the soldiery, 
but treated other men with contempt. He killed his brother, Greta 



THE HISTORY OF ROME. Ug 

in the arms of his mother, and then put his preceptor, the great jurist 
Papinian, to death, for refusing to justify the fratricide. For the 
purpose of augmenting the revenue, he gave the right of Eoman 
citizenship to all the freeborn men in the empire. After the murder 
of the profligate tyrant by his own soldiers, in a campaign against the 
Parthians, his relative, Heliogabalus, a priest of the Syrian sun-god, 
Heliogabalus, succeeded to the throne. Heliogabalus was a weak and 
a.d. 218— 222. cruel epicure, who, by the introduction of the sensual 
worship of Baal from Syria, destroyed the last remnants of the 
ancient Eoman discipline and morality. The praetorians at length 
put the effeminate debauchee to death, and raised his cousin, Alex- 
Alexander ander Severus, to the throne. Severus was a man of 
Severus, a.d. respectable character, who adopted many excellent mea- 
222—235. sures, and listened to the advice of his sagacious mother ; 
but his powers were inferior to the conduct of such difficult affairs of 
state. The praetorians killed the great jurist, Ulpian, before his eyes, 
with impunity ; and on the eastern boundary, Ardschir (Artaxerxes) 
overthrew the Parthian government, and established the new Persian 
empire of the Sassanidse, who soon pursued their conquests into the 
Eoman territory. 

§ 167. The death of the emperor and his mother, by an insurrec- 
tion of the soldiers at Mayence, reduced the empire to such confusion, 
that twelve emperors were raised and dethroned within the space of 
Philippus twenty years. Philippus Arabus, who, like Alexander 
Arabus, a.d. Severus, was a friend to the Christians, sought to signalize 
243—249. kj; s reign D y a magnificent celebration of the thousandth 
Deems a.d. anniversary of Eome. His successor, Decius, persecuted 
249—251. the Christians, but found an early death in battle against 
the Goths, a German tribe who had established themselves on the 
Lower Danube, and made predatory excursions from thence, both by 
land and sea, into the Eoman territory. After his death, the empire 
seemed on the point of dissolution. The generals in the different 
provinces caused themselves to be proclaimed emperors, so that the 
Gallienus, historians of the period, during which Gallienus reigned in 
A.D.259— 268. Eome, and his father, Valerianus, was pining in captivity 
in Persia, call this the age of the thirty tyrants. In the mean time, 
the empire was attacked on the east by the New Persians, under the 
command of the valiant Sapores, whilst the German tribes threatened 
the other quarters. 

§ 168. At this juncture, Aurelianus, a man imbued with the old 
Aurelianus, Eoman courage and military discipline, was the restorer 
a.d. 270— 275. of the empire. He subdued the rebellious generals, and 
marched against the kingdom of Palmyrene, which Odenatus had 
founded on an oasis in Syria, and which was governed, after his death, 
by his beautiful and heroic wife, Zenobia. Palmyra, the capital city, 



114 THE ANCIENT WORLD. 

rich in arts, philosophy, and commerce, Avas taken and destroyed, and 
Zenobia led in triumph to Home. Her preceptor and adviser, the 
gallant philosopher, Longinus, died a violent death. At first, a % 
follower of the new Platonists, who joined the Oriental profundity, 
supersitition, and belief in miracles, to the doctrines of Plato, and put 
the inactive contemplation of the East in place of the practical intelli- 
gence of ancient Rome, Longinus had afterwards relinquished this 
obscure wisdom. The ruins of Palmyra yet enchain the admiration of 
the traveller. Aurelian again restored the boundary of the Danube on 
the north, gave up the province on the farther side of the river to the 
enemy, and transplanted the inhabitants to the right bank. Lest his 
capital should be endangered by any sudden attack, he surrounded 
Rome with a wall. 

§ 169. After Aurelian had been killed by his soldiers, and his suc- 
Tacitus, a.d. cessor, Tacitus (a descendant of the historian), had per- 
275—276. ished in an expedition against the Goths, the courageous 
Probus, a.d. an( i upright Probus was raised to the throne. He en- 
270—282. larged and completed the boundary wall (Devil's Wall), 
from the Bavarian Danube to the Taurus, and secured it by means of 
troops ; he planted vineyards on the Rhine and in Hungary, and 
reformed the affairs of the army. After Probus also had been killed 
Carus, a.d. D y hi s troops, and his successor, Cams, had fallen in an 
282—284. expedition against the Persians, either by a stroke of 
lightning or the hand of an assassin, the throne was assumed by the 
sagacious Diocletian. 

§ 170. Diocletian increased the imperial power, and lowered the 
Diocletian dignity of the senate ; he projected a division of the 
a.d. 284— 305. empire for the purpose of more easily resisting the 
enemy. He himself, with the title of Augustus, governed the Eastern 
region, together with Thrace, whilst his assistant in the empire 
(Caesar), Galerius, was at the head of the Illyrian provinces ; in the 
same manner, Maximianus, under the title of Augustus, ruled over 
Italy, Africa, and the islands ; and his son-in-law, Constantius 
(Chlorus), governed the "Western provinces, Spain, Gaul, and Britain. 
Eor twenty years Diocletian governed the empire with vigour and 
dexterity, and restored its former strength and stability. But 
when he allowed himself to be seduced into commanding a bloody 
persecution against the Christians, he disturbed the evening of 
a most active life, and stained his name and government with 
an indelible mark of infamy. The sword of persecution was still 
raging among the confessors of the crucified Jesus, when Diocletian 
abdicated his throne to pass his remaining years in rural retire- 
ment at Salona, in Dalmatia, and to forget the bustle of the world 
in the arrangement of his palace and gardens. 

§ 171. The abdication of Diocletian was followed by a period of 



THE HISTORY OF ROME. 115 

confusion and sanguinary civil wars, which was only put an end to, 
when Constantinus, the brave and wise son of Constantius, assumed 
the government of the "West, and marched into the field against Maxi- 
mian's hard-hearted son, Maxentius. Constantine, who had been 
won over to Christianity by his mother, Helena, erected the banner 
„,„ of the cross (labarum), and overthrew the cruel Maxen- 

A.D. 312. . ... 

this at the Milvian Bridge, and took possession of Koroe 
after his opponent had been drowned in the waters of the Tiber. It 
was from this point that Constantine ruled over the "West, whilst his 
brother-in-law, Licinius, governed the East. But the ambition of 
Constantine soon occasioned another war, in which Licinius lost 
victory, kingdom, and, at last, his life. It was thus that Constantine 
became sole governor of the Roman empire, and showed 
favour to the Christians. But that the doctrines of 
Jesus had little effect upon his mind, is shown by the cruelty with 
which he caused whole troops of his captured enemies to be thrown 
to wild beasts, by the severity he displayed in the execution of his 
wife and his noble son, Crispus, and by the love of vengeance and 
want of truth displayed in his character. 



i2 



BOOK SECOND. 



MIGRATION OF NATIONS AND THE MIDDLE AGE. 



A. MIGRATION OP NATIONS AND ESTABLISHMENT 

OF MONOTHEISM. 

I. THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVER PAGANISM. 

1. TIIE CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF THE FIRST CEKTTTRY. 

§ 172. The Romans were very tolerant of the heathen forms of 
religion amongst other nations, as is apparent at once from the fact, 
that they adopted not only the mythology of the Greeks, bnt also, by 
degrees, the theology of the East, of the Chaldeans, Persians, 
Egyptians, and Syrians. But as Christianity forbade any combination 
with Paganism, the Christians carefully avoided all participation in the 
feasts and religious rites of the heathen, and kept themselves sepa- 
rate even in the dady intercourse of life ; whilst the hatred of the 
people and the mistrust of their rulers was roused, and heavy perse- 
cutions arose against them. Ten persecutions of Christians are 
recorded from the days of Nero, when Peter and Paul are said to 
have met their death, to the first decennium of the fourth century, 
when Diocletian and Galerius drove the confessors of the crucified 
Saviour, by rack and axe, to the altar of sacrifice ; burnt down the 
churches, and gave the Holy Scriptures to the flames. Even the 
noble-minded Marcus Aurehus thought it his duty to break by force 
the stubbornness of the supposed fanatics ; and the short reign of 
Decius has become memorable for one of the most violent persecutions 
of the Christians. But the holy joy with which the martyrs, bearing- 
witness by their blood, endured torture and death, multiplied the 
number of believers, so that the blood of martyrs is justly called " the 
seed of the Church." The objects of persecution concealed themselves 
in subterraneous passages (the Catacombs), near the graves of those 
they loved, in caves and mountain clefts. Oppression heightened 
their trust in God ; and the number of apostate believers who deli- 
vered up the Bible to be burned, or offered incense before the statue 
of the emperor, was small when compared with the number of those 
who stood firm in their faith. During the years of persecution, Chris- 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT AND JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 1 1 7 

tianity continued to spread, by the indwelling force of truth, and 
favourable circumstances from without, to all quarters of the heavens, 
so that as early as the third century, before Constantine raised it to a 
state religion, it overstepped the bounds of the Boman empire. 

2. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT AND JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 

§ 173. Constantine, as sole emperor, transferred his residence to 
Byzantium, which from this time forward was called Constan- 
tinople. He fortified the city, which was favourably situated, with 
walls and towers, and embellished it most magnificently with palaces 
and churches, race-grounds, and works of art. He then abolished 
the antiquated constitution of the Roman empire ; vested all power 
in the imperial throne ; surrounded himself with a brilliant court of 
chamberlains, ministers, officials, and servants ; and established a 
galling system of taxation. The better to conduct the management 
of his vast empire, he divided it into four prefectures or lieu- 
tenancies : the east, to which Thrace and Egypt were assigned ; 
Hlyricum with Greece ; Italy with Africa ; the west (containing Gaul, 
Spain, Britain) . Each of these he divided into a greater or less number 
of districts (dioceses), and these again into states (provinces). The last 
years of his life Constantine devoted principally to religious and 
ecclesiastical matters, but he deferred the rite of baptism which 
cleanseth from sin, till shortly before his death. He founded many 
churches, and endowed them with landed estates. He granted to the 
clergy an immunity from taxes, and other privileges, and allowed 
legacies to the Church. Erom this time forward, the constitution of the 
Christian Church took a new shape ; whereas before, the Elders and 
Bishops were chosen from the whole Church-community, and the 
principle of brotherly equality amongst all Christians was held in 
honour, now, the priesthood (clergy) separated from the people (laity), 
and introduced degrees of rank, so that the Bishops of the principal 
cities were placed over the remaining Bishops as metropolitans, and 
these again had the superintendence of the priests in their immediate 
neighbourhood. At the same time, the Church services, which before 
consisted only in singing, prayer, and reading the Bible, and con- 
cluded with the love-feasts, were made more solemn by the aid of 
music and other arts. 

§ 174. Aeianism. — Augustine. — Fathers oe the Church. — 
The doctrine (dogma) also of Christianity did not long remain in its 
original simplicity and purity, when many learned men made it the 
subject of their inquiry and meditation. The first point which they 
investigated was the relation of Christ to Grod, and the mysterious 
junction of His divine and human natures. On this question, vehe- 
ment contentions arose as early as the time of Constantine, between 
the Alexandrian ecclesiastics, Arius and Athanasius, the first of whom 



118 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

maintained that Christ, the Son of God, was inferior to God the 
Father, and dependent on Him ; while the latter laid down the doc- 
trine of the Trinity in Unity, through the principle that God the 
Son was of the same substance with God the Father. The first 
general Church Council ((Ecumenical Synod), which Constantine 
convened at Nice, declared the opinion of Athanasius to be the true 
(orthodox) faith of the Chinch ; but the German nations, the 
Goths, Vandals, Longobards, to whom Christianity had been brought 
by Arian missionaries, continued in Arianism for another century, 
and were therefore excommunicated and driven out as heretics from 
the Catholic (universal) Church. An equally important dispute arose 
in the fifth century, about original sin and predestination, since 
Augustine, Bishop of North Africa, laid down the principle that the 
nature of man, through Adam's fall, has become unable to do good by 
its own strength ; that this strength is produced only by the grace of 
God in one portion of mankind, while the other remains abandoned to 
ruin ; so that one man may be from the beginning appointed (pre- 
destinated) to salvation, another to condemnation. These harsh doc- 
trines were disputed by Pelagius, a monk, residing in Africa, and the 
principle maintained, that man can, by the strength of his own free 
will, do good, and become a partaker of salvation. — The Christian 
writers of the first century were called Fathers of the Church. 
Their works are the more important, because on them depend the 
traditional doctrines of the Catholic Church. The nearer therefore 
they stand to the time of the Apostles, the greater is their authority, 
as we assume that the disciples of Jesus made many oral communi- 
cations to then contemporaries, which are not found in the apostolic 
writings, but might well be known from the works of the Fathers. 
They wrote partly in Greek, and partly in Latin. 
Constantius § 1^5. Of Constantine's three vicious sons, who ac- 
a.d.357— 3G0. cording to their father's will divided the empire, Con- 
stantius, after long years of bloody struggles, obtained the sole 
sovereignty. As he was himself busied in Asia, he sent his cousin, 
Julian, to Gaul, to protect the frontiers of the empire against the 
Germanic nations. Julian besieged the Allemanni, in 
Strasburgh, twice passed the Ehine, repidsed the Franks 
in the Netherlands, and restored the ancient renown of the Eoman 
arms. Proclaimed emperor by his soldiers in his favourite 
city, Paris, Julian marched against Constantius, and 
a civil war would have ensued, had not the latter died just at this 
Julian crisis. Juliau now without hindrance entered the imperial 

A.D.3(il— 303. castle in Constantinople, as sovereign of the vast empire. 
He immediately removed all the superfluous officers of the court, 
reduced the imperial household, and in his dress and mode of bring 
studied the greatest simplicity ; he provided for the impartial adminis- 



THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS. 119 

tration of justice, and restored discipline and military virtue in the 
army. Strongly as he worked by these means on an indolent gene- 
ration, yet his zeal to revive Paganism hindered the success of 
his efforts. The constraint which he endured in his youth under 
Christian masters had produced in him an aversion to the Gospel ; 
whilst his lively imagination, and his love for Plato's philosophy 
(§ 65, 72), and for the literature and poetry of antiquity, made him a 
most enthusiastic admirer of paganism. For this reason he was 
branded by Christian writers with the title of Apostate. Nevertheless, 
he was too just and too wise to inflict bloody persecutions on the 
Christians. He contented himself with removing them from his 
presence, and from public and professional offices, opposing their 
opinions in writings, and re-establishing the heathen worship, with its 
feasts and sacrifices. He himself sometimes offered solemn heca- 
tombs of 100 bulls to the god of the sun. Having, however, with 
the heroism of old Rome, undertaken an adventurous campaign 
against the New Persians, he pressed forward victorious over the 
Euphrates and Tigris ; but being entrapped into an inaccessible moun- 
tainous district, and compelled to commence a difficult retreat, he was 
wounded mortally by an arrow, and his schemes brought to nought. 
Jovian, His successor Jovian, in a dishonourable peace, restored 

a.d. 363-364. the conquered territory, and made Christianity again the 
Valens, dominant religion. After his death, the empire was 

a.d. 364—378. divided, the Arian Valens ruling over the East, whilst his 

Valentinian, brother, the rude and warlike Valentinian I., governed 
a.d. 364-395. the Wegt> 



II. THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS. 
1. THEODOSITJS THE GREAT. 

§ 176. When Valens was ruling the East, the Huns, a wild, 
hideous, well-mounted nomad people, came from the steppes of 
Central Asia to Europe. After the overthrow of the Alani, the 
brave East Goths (whose grey-haired king, Hermanrich, devoted him- 
self to death), conquered them, and then fell upon the "West Groths. 
But this people having' been already converted to Arian Christianity 
by Bishop Ulfilas, obtained permission from Valens to cross the Danube, 
with their wives and children, and to occupy new abodes. Through 
the venality of the Roman officers, the West Goths, contrary to agree- 
ment, remained in possession of their arms ; and as from the severity 
and avarice of the governor they soon fell into the greatest distress 
from hunger, they seized the accustomed sword, stormed the city of 
Marcianople, and carried robbery and desolation through the land.. 
Valens marched hastily against the enemy ; but in the murderous 



120 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

battle of Adrianople lie lost tlie victory, and his life, during the 
flight, in a binning hut. The victors now roved through the defence- 
less land with unrestrained fury, as far as the Julian Alps, and 
menaced even the frontiers of Italy. Then was the brave Spaniard 
Theodosius chosen sovereign of the East. He terminated the Gothic 
war, by settling one part of the enemy in the southern Danubian 
provinces, and enlisting another part as soldiers in the Roman armies. 
After many contests and military exploits, Theodosius, henceforth 
called the Great, at length obtained the sovereignty of the West also, 
and so united, for the last time, the whole world-wide Roman empire 
under one sceptre. He was a powerful, but passionate prince ; and 
on one occasion, in Thessalonica, he put to death 7000 citizens, 
because they had slain his governor. For this, the Chinch's penance 
was inflicted on him by the undaunted bishop, Ambrose, of Milan, 
— a punishment which he willingly underwent. Theodosius was a 
zealous champion of the Catholic faith. He denounced and perse- 
cuted Arianism, interdicted the use of sacrifices and divinations, and 
permitted the heathen temples to be plundered and destroyed. Now 
was extinguished the sacred fire of Vesta — the oracles and sibyls 
were silent — and the pagan pantheism yielded to the faith in the 
crucified Saviour. At his death, Theodosius made over the East, with 
Illyria, to his son, Arcadius, who was eighteen years old, by whose 
side stood the Gaul, Rufinus ; while Honorius, then in his eleventh 
year, under the guidance of the politic and warlike Vandal, Stdicho, 
was to be lord of the West. Erom this time forwards the empire 
remained divided. 

2. WEST GOTHS. — BTJEGUNDIANS VANDALS. 

§ 177. Envy of Stdicho induced Rufinus to provoke the valiant 
Alaric, king of the West Goths, to invade the provinces of the 
Western empire. The Goths marched forthwith, murdering and plun- 
dering, through Thessaly, Central Greece, and Peloponnesus, and 
treading under foot the remains of Greek civilization, until, 
being surrounded by Stilicho's forces, they were compelled 
to retreat. A short time after this, Alaric fell upon Upper Italy, 
pursued his devastating course up the banks of the Po, but suffered 
so much loss in two undecisive battles against Stdicho, 
that he retreated upon IUyria, to wait for a more favour- 
able opportunity. This enemy of the empire had scarcely been 
repidsed, before vast hordes of pagan Germans, Vandals, Bur- 
gunclians, and Suevi, &c, burst into Italy, under the command of 
duke Radagais, destroyed the towns and vfllages, and filled every 
place with cruel slaughter and desolation. But these also were over- 

, „ come near Florence, bv the military skill of Stilicho. 
a.d. 406. 'J J 

Their leaders were killed: thousands fell beneath the 



THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS. \0 ] 

swords of the victors, or perished by hunger and disease ; others 
entered into the Roman service. The remains of their army threw 
themselves into G-aul, where, after repeated acts of devastation, the 
Burgundians settled on the Rhine and the Jura, and founded the 
kingdom of Burgundy, which extended from the Mediterranean to 
the Vosges. The Vandals and Suevi, on the other hand, crossed the 
Pyrenees, and won dwelling-places for themselves by the sword, in 
Spain and Portugal, which they however gave up again twenty years 
afterwards, and crossed over into Africa with the Vandal king, 
Genseric. 

§ 178. The brave Stilicho, in his necessity, had entered into a 
friendly alliance with Alaric, and consented to pay him a yearly 
tribute. His enemies founded an accusation of high treason upon 
this, and procured his execution at Ravenna. Hereupon, Alaric, 
enraged at the withdrawal of the tribute, and appealed to by Stdicho's 
adherents for protection, marched into Italy, laid siege to Rome, and 
compelled the terrified inhabitants to purchase the clemency of the 
conqueror with gold, silver, and costly apparel. But when the court 
at Ravenna disdainfidly rejected Alaric' s proposals of peace, the 
Gothic prince again appeared before the walls of the former 
mistress of the world, stormed it at length dming the 
night, and surrendered it to be plundered for three days by his army. 
The hero died shortly after in the flower of his age, in Lower Italy. 
There is a legend that declares that his coffin and treasures were 
buried in the bed of the stream Busento, which had been diverted 
from its course for the purpose. His brother-in-law, Adolf, concluded 
a treaty with Honorius, by virtue of which the West Goths marched 
a d 412 ^ n *° Southern Gaul. It was here that they founded the 

kingdom of the West Goths, which at first extended from 
the Garonne to the Ebro, and had Tolosa (Toulouse) for its principal 
city. When, however, the Vandals, some years later, went into 
Africa, the West Goths gradually conquered the whole of Spain; but, 
on the other hand, were compelled to relinquish the territory between 
the Pyrenees and the Garonne to the Pranks. 

Valentinian § ^ 9 - After Honorius followed Valentinian III., with 

IIL.a.d. 425 iEtius at his side, for general and influential minister. 
—455. rj^g governor of Northern Africa, Bonifacius, lived in 

enmity with this vEtius ; and being afraid of his anger, he rebelled, 
and summoned the Vandals, under their bold and crafty king, Gense- 
ric, out of Spain, to his assistance. It is true, that upon their 
arrival he repented of this rash act, and opposed them with his forces. 
But the warlike Vandals overcame him, and, in defiance of the court 
of Ravenna, made themselves masters of Northern Africa, where 
they established the empire of the Vandals, with its capital, Carthage, 
conquered Sicily and the Balearic islands, and rendered themselves 



122 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

formidable to all islands and lands near the coast by their piracies. 
The kingdom of the Vandals existed for a hundred years in North 
Africa. Genseric died in 477. 

3. ATTILA, KIKG OP THE HUNS (A.D. 450). 

§ 180. About the middle of the fifth century, Attila, surnamed 
the Scourge of God, left his wooden residence on the banks of the 
Theiss, in Hungary, for the purpose of conquering the "Western 
empire of Roine by the sword. More than half a million savage 
warriors, partly Huns, and partly G-ermans, who were their subjects 
or allies, marched through Austria, Bavaria, and Alemannia, to the 
Rhine, where they annihfiated the royal house of Burgundy in 
"Worms (Nibelungenlied), destroyed the Roman towns, and then 
carried slaughter and desolation into G-aul. It was here that the 
valiant JEtius, with an army composed of Romans, Burgundians, 
West Goths, and Franks, succeeded, in the Catalaunian 
plains (Chalons on the Marne), in setting a limit to 
Attila' s victorious course. 162,000 dead bodies, and among them 
that of the brave king of the West Goths, covered the field of battle. 
Eroin his camp, fortified with wagons, the Hun bade defiance to the 
attacks of the enemy, and then retreated into Hungary 
a.d. 452. (Pannonia), with the purpose of invading Italy in the 
following year. Aquileja was destroyed ; Milan, Pavia, Verona, and 
Padua taken by storm ; and the fertile banks of the Po turned into 
a desert. The unfortunate inhabitants of Aquileja sought for 
refuge on the rocks and sand-islands of the lagunes, and thus laid 
the foundation of Venice. Attila was already on his march towards 
Rome, where he was induced by the prayers of the Roman bishop, 
Leo I., to conclude a peace with Valentinian, and to retreat. Attila's 
sudden death, either by haemorrhage, or the vengeance of his Bur- 
gundian bride, checked the progress of the Hunnish empire. The 
Ostrogoths, the Gepidse, and the Longobards obtained their inde- 
pendence after a severe struggle, whilst the remains of the nomadic 
Huns were lost in the rich pastoral steppes of Southern Russia. 

4. UESTRUCTION OP THE WESTERN BOMAN EMPIRE. 

§ 181. The Roman power was now rapidly approaching to its 
fall. Valentinian with his own hand killed iEtius, the last support 
of the empire. Shortly after, the luxurious emperor lost his own life 
by Petronius Maximus, whose wife he had corrupted. Petronius, 
raised to be Valentinian's successor, aspired to the hand of the impe- 
rial widow, which induced the latter to summon the Vandals against 
the murderer of her husband. Genseric landed at Ostia, took Rome, 
and subjected the city for fourteen clays to plunder, during which time 
the works of art were ruthlessly mutilated (Vandalism). Laden with 



THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS. 123 

plunder and prisoners (the empress and her two daughters among 
the number), the Vandals returned to the coast of Africa, where they 
resumed their piratical employments with more audacity than before. 
After some time, the Sueve, Ricimer, a bold, crafty, but blood- 
stained man, acquired such power, that to the day of his death he 
managed the crown and empire at his pleasure, without even assuming 
the imperial title. Three years after Ricimer' s death, the ambitious 
general, Orestes, invested his son, Romulus Augustulus, with the power- 
less crown. Upon this, the German troops in the pay of the Romans 
demanded a third part of the lands of Italy ; and when this was not 
granted, the valiant Odoacer commanded the captive Orestes to be put 
to death, and, by assuming the title of King of Italy, put an end to 

the Western empire of Rome. Odoacer bestowed a yearly 
a d 476. 

pension, and a residence in Lower Italy, upon the inoffen- 
sive Romulus Augustulus. 

5. THEODORIC THE OSTROGOTH (A.D. 500). 

§ 182. Odoacer had reigned, not without renown, for twelve years, 
when Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, with the consent of the 
Byzantine emperor, marched from the Danube upon Italy. He was 
followed by 200,000 men fit for war, with then wives, children, and 
goods. Odoacer was unable to resist this force. Overcome by 
Theodoric near Verona, he concealed himself behind the walls of 
Ravenna ; and it was only after a gallant defence of three years that 
he at length surrendered upon honourable conditions. But he Was 
killed not long after, by the Goths, at a riotous banquet. From this 
time, the empire of the Ostrogoths, which extended from the southern 
point of Italy to the Danube, was governed wisely and jiistly by 
Theodoric, from Ravenna. He paid respect to the ancient laws and 
institutions, employed the original inhabitants of the country in 
trade, agriculture, and commerce, and committed war and the use of 
arms to the Goths. Even literature and civilization rejoiced in his 
protection ; and learned Romans, like the historian Cassiodorus, were 
advanced to the highest offices of the state. Theodoric's authority 
was so great abroad, that contending kings brought their differences 
to his judgment-seat. It was only a short time previous to his death, 
that he was rendered cruel by suspicion, and commanded the worthy 
senator Boethius and his father-in-law, Symmachus, to be executed, 
because they were suspected of having invited the Byzantine court 
to expel the Goths. It was in prison that Boethius wrote his cele- 
brated work the " Consolations of Philosophy." 

6. CLODION, E!ING OP THE ERANKS AND THE MEROVINGIANS. 

§ 183. The Franks, a tribe of German origin, had marched from 
their hereditary possessions on the Lower Rhine to the Maase and 



124 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

the Sainbre. From hence, their warlike king, Clodion, led them forth 
to war and plunder. After he had conquered and put to death the 
last Roman governor, Syagrius, in Soissons, and made 
himself master of the country between the Seine and the 
Lone, he advanced against the Alemanni, who were in possession of 
an extensive kingdom on both banks of the Rhine. He 
defeated them in the great battle of Zulpich (between Bonn 
and Aix), and subjected their country on the Moselle and the Lahn. 
In the heat of the battle, Clodion had sworn, that if the doubtful com- 
bat shoidd terminate in his favour, he would" embrace the faith of his 
Christian wife ; and in the same year he, with 3000 nobles of his 
train, received baptism in the waters of the Rhine. But Christianity 
produced no emotions of pity in his savage heart. After he had 
extended the Frank empire to the Rhone on the east, and 
to the Garonne on the south, he attempted to secure the 
whole territory to himself and his posterity, by putting to death the 
chiefs of all the Frank tribes. 

§ 184. The wickedness of the father was inherited by his four sons, 
who, after Clodion' s death, divided the Frank empire between them; 
the eldest received the eastern kingdom, Austrasia, with the capital, 
Metz ; the three younger sons shared the western territory Neustria, 
and Burgundy which was connected with it. But the empire was 
again from time to time united. The kingly house of the Merovin- 
gians displays a frightful picture of human depravity. The murders 
of brothers and relatives, bloody civil wars, and the explosion of un- 
bridled passions, fill the annals of its history. The savage enormities 
of the two queens, Brunhilda and Fredigonda, are particularly dread- 
ful. These horrors at length destroyed all the power of the race of 
Clodion, so that they are distinguished in history as sluggish kings, 
whilst the steward of the royal possessions (Mayor of the palace) 
gradually obtained possession of all the powers of government. A 
visit to the yearly assemblies of the people (Marzfelder), upon a 
carriage drawn by four oxen, was at last the only occupation of the 
imbecde Merovingians. At first, each of the three kingdoms had its 
own mayor, until the brave and shrewd Pepin von Heristall suc- 
ceeded in uniting the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy with 
that of Austrasia, and making them hereditary in his own family. 
From this time, Pepin's descendants, who were called dukes of Fran- 
conia, possessed the regal power, whilst the Merovingians were kings 
in nothing but the name. 

7. THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 

§ 185. About the middle of the fifth century, the Roman army 
left Britain, which it was unable any longer to retain. The inha- 
bitants, who were too weak to resist the attacks of the wild Picts and 



THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS. 125 

Scots (§ 159, 168), sought assistance from the Angles and Saxons of 
the Lower Elbe. These obeyed the summons ; but after they had 
repulsed the enemy, they turned their swords against the Britons 
themselves, and, after a fearful contest, subdued their country, which 
was henceforth called England. The greater number of the Celtic 
inhabitants perished by the sword, those who were able took refuge 
in Gaul (Bretagne). It was only in the mountainous districts of 
"Wales and Cornwall that the Celts asserted their independence and 
national peculiarities, till as late as the thirteenth century. The rest 
of the kingdom fell into the power of the Anglo-Saxons, who esta- 
blished there seven small monarchies. These existed in a separate 
state in the midst of perpetual contests till the ninth century, when 
Egbert united the seven kingdoms (Heptarchy), and 
assumed the title of King of England. The paganism of 
Germany had yielded to Christianity as early as the seventh century, 
when the Benedictine monk, Augustine, with a crowd of missionaries, 
landed in Kent, led the king and his nobles to baptism, and founded 
the seat of the archbishopric of Canterbury. 

8. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE AND THE EONGOBARDS. 

§ 186. The Byzantine empire displays a melancholy picture of 
moral depravity. A court filled with oriental luxury and magnifi- 
cence, where women and favourites raise and dethrone weak or vicious 
emperors by crimes or intrigues ; an insolent body-guard, who carried 
on the same audacious game with the crown that the praetorians had 
formerly done ; and a fickle population, who took pleasure in nothing 
but questions of religious controversy, and the rude sports of the 
race-course (hippodromus) . In these race-courses, two great parties 
who mortally hated and persecuted each other, distinguished them- 
selves, according to the colours of the chariot-drivers, into the Blue 
Justinian a.d. an & the Green. It was under these circumstances, that 
527—565. Justinian, a man of low origin, ascended the throne, 
where he completed several great undertakings. He subdued the Green 
party, that had raised an insurrection against him, and closed the 
race-course for ever ; he ordered the code of laws known by the name 
of Corpus Juris and Pandects, to be prepared by his minister, Tri- 
bonian ; he procured silk-worms from China by an artifice, and trans- 
planted the manufacture of silk into Europe ; he built the church of 
St. Sophia in Constantinople, and he persecuted the heathens and 
Arians. 

§ 187. Both the Vandals and Goths had made a profession of 
Arianism. Hence Justinian embraced the project of visiting them 
with war, and, by the conquest of their lands, of restoring his 
empire to the same extent it had possessed under Constantine. Beli- 
sarius, the great hero of his time, subdued in a few months the king- 



128 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

mon, and other spices, is called Arabia Felix, lived for ages in proud 
independence, a people capable of civilization. Their religion was a 
rude paganism ; a black stone in the Caaba at Mecca, served as the 
national palladium, the care of which belonged to the Koreishites. 
They were rendered rich by an extensive commerce, and took pleasure 
in mental cultivation and poetry. It was in the midst of this people 
Mohammed ^ ia ^ Mohammed was born, towards the end of the sixth 
a.d. 571 — century, from the respected priestly race of the Koreishites. 
ti3 -" During his youth, he made journeys with the caravans 

into foreign lands in the capacity of merchant, and thus became con- 
vinced that the religion of the Jews and Christians must be preferable 
to the idolatrous worship of the Arabs. As soon, therefore, as he 
had acquired an independent position by his marriage with a rich 
widow, he withdrew from the bustle of the world to the recesses of 
his own bosom, and sought how he might elevate his countrymen 
from their degradation. The expectation entertained by the Jews of 
a Messiah, the promise of Christ to send a Comforter to those who 
loved him, who shoidd guide them into all truth, wrought upon his 
ardent imagination, and excited within him the conviction, that he 
must be the person of whom the world stood in need. His epileptic 
fits favoured the pretence that he held communion with angels, and 
was the subject of divine inspiration. 

§ 191. In his fortieth year, Mohammed came forth with his doctrine, 
"There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet." But with 
the exception of his wife, his father-in-law Abu Bekir, his son-in- 
law Ali, and a few of his friends and relations, no one at first believed 
in his mission ; nay, he was even compelled, by a menacing tumult, to 
16th July % from Mecca to Medina. (The Mohammedans reckon 
622. their years from this event, which is called Hejira.) He 

here found adherents with whom he undertook expeditions, and at 
length, after some victorious encounters, he forced his return to Mecca. 
In Medina he composed a part of the sentences of which the holy 
book of the Koran consists. Mecca soon acknowledged him as a 
prophet, and his doctrine, called Islam, was soon predominant all 
over Arabia. He combined in it the fundamental doctrines of 
Judaism and Christianity, with maxims that were adapted to the 
East. He commanded frequent ablutions and prayers, circumcision, 
fasts, almsgiving and pilgrimages to Mecca, forbade the use of wine 
and swine's flesh, and sanctioned polygamy. A chief commandment 
of the Koran was, to diffuse Islam by every means, and to compel the 
nations to receive it by fire and sword. Those who feU bravely in 
battle were promised a paradise of sensual enjoyments. The prophet 
died in the eleventh year of the Hejira. Mecca, where he was born, 
and Medina, the place where his grave is situated, are regarded as 
sacred cities of pilgrimage. Mohammed united gravity and dignity 



THE MIGRATION OF NATIONS. 129 

in his carriage and bearing; he was benevolent, simple in his manner 
of living, and not devoid of domestic virtues ; but he was too much 
addicted to women. 

§ 192. Ali, the husband of the favourite daughter of the prophet, 
hoped to become Mohammed's successor (Khalif). But Mohammed's 
Abu Bekir, intriguing wife, Ayesha, procured the election of her father, 
a.d. 632— Abu Bekir, who was succeeded by the simple and ener- 
Omar, a.d. getic Omar. Under this man, the Arabs, inspired by their 
634—644. new faith, carried their victorious swords beyond the 
limits of Arabia. Palestine and Syria were conquered, and Moham- 
med's warriors marched into the Christian cities of Antioch, Damas- 
cus, and Jerusalem. Kaled, "the sword of God," and the crafty 
Amru conducted the valiant bands. Persia was subjected, after a 
succession of bloody engagements. The last king, Tes- 
dejird fled (as once Darius before Alexander), with the 
sacred fire in his hand, to the mountainous highlands, where he 
perished by the hands of an assassin. The Arabs now pursued their 
victorious course through the eastern highlands, and carried the 
doctrines of Mohammed to the Upper Indus. The Persian fire- 
worship fell before the Koran, and henceforth, Islam was the ruling 
religion of the East. The new cities of Basra, Cufa, and Bagdad, on 
the Tigris, soon became the centres of trade, and the seats of oriental 
luxury and magnificence. Shortly after this, Amru 
marched from Syria into Egypt, took Alexandria, (by 
which means the remains of the library are said to have perished, 
§ 125,) burnt Memphis, (in the neighbourhood of which the chief 
city, Cairo, took its origin from the camp of the general,) and thrust 
aside the Gospel by the Koran. 

§ 193. Omar shortly after, fell by the dagger of a Persian slave, 
Othman, a.d. an( l Othman, the collector and arranger of the Koran, 
644—656. succeeded to the Khalifate. But Othman was also assas- 
sinated ; and when Ah at length ascended the sacred chair that had 
long been his right, the family of the Ommiades rose against him and 
excited a civil war, in which Ali and his whole house perished, and 
the Khalifate was taken possession of by the Ommiades, 
who established their residence in the beautiful Damascus. 
The Arabians prosecuted their conquests under the Ommiades both 
by land and water. Cyprus, Rhodes, Asia Minor, aU felt the edge of 
their swords; the capital of the Byzantine empire had to sustain 
A D# seven attacks and sieges, and was only saved by the newly- 

668—675. discovered Greek fire. The north coast of Africa was 
subdued at the same time, and the Christian religion and civilization 
destroyed in the course of a lengthened war. The Arabians also 
gained a firm footing in Sicily, from whence they made predatory 
excursions upon the coasts of Italy. 

K 



130 TII E HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

§ 194. It happened about the beginning of the eighth century of 
the Christian era, that the "West Goth, Roderick, deprived his brother 
of the Spanish throne. Hereupon, the sons of the banished man 
called the Arabs into Africa to revenge him. Taric, the Arabian 
general, crossed the straits of the sea, founded the town of Gibraltar 
(Gebel al Taric), and overthrew the "West Goths at the 
battle of Xeres de la Prontera, where Roderick and the 
flower of his chivalry were slain in the field. The Arabians overran 
the whole of Spain as far as the rocky Asturias in a rapid course 
of victories. The Saracens crossed the Pyrenees at their side, 
conquered the south of Prance as far as the Rhone, and threatened 
France and Christianity with destruction ; when Charles Martel, the 
mayor of the palace of Pepin Heristal (§ 184), overthrew 
them between Tours and Poitiers, in a battle that lasted 
seven days, and compelled them to fall back upon Spain. Charles 
Martel was thus the saviour of Christian Germany in the West. 
§ 195. Twenty years after Charles Martel's death, the dynasty of 
the Ommiades was overthrown by the Abbassides, and 
their whole famfly destroyed. Populous towns sprang 
up. Attention was paid to trade, agriculture, and the rearing of 
cattle ; mines were opened, and the prosperity of the country was 
displayed in rich villages, flourishing farms, and splendid palaces 
(Alhambra) : arts and sciences were encouraged. But after the race 
of the Ommiades became extinct, the Moorish power in 
Spain was broken up into a number of small states, that 
gradually yielded before the Christians of the North. The latter had 
enlarged then territories by successfid wars from their head-quarters, 
the Asturias, so that with time, three kingdoms had been established, 
Castfle, Arragon, and Portugal, each of which existed independently 
of the other, and waged furious contests with the Arabs of the South. 
These wars produced a spirit of chivalry, religious zeal, and freedom 
among the Christian Spaniards. The deeds of these God-inspired 
warriors, particularly those of the great Cid Campeador, 
were handed down to posterity in heroic songs (Ro- 
mances), and kept alive the courage and chivalrous spirit of the 
Spanish nobflity. Civic freedom was at the same time flourishing in 
the cities. The victory gained by the united Christian force at 
Tolosa, in the Sierra Morena, broke for ever the power of the 
Arabians. 

§ 196. The arts and sciences flourished in all the countries 
inhabited by the Arabs, as well as in Spain. Mosques, palaces, 
and gardens, were to be met with in every Arabian town. Industry 
and commerce brought wealth, — the source of refinement, but, at the 
same time, of the love of splendour and effeminacy. Architecture, 
music (the system of notes), and decorative painting (arabesques), 



THE CARLOVINGI. 131 

flourished in all the chief Arabian towns. The sciences were taught 
at Cordova, Cairo, Bagdad, Salerno, and many other cities ; more 
particularly, grammar, philosophy, mathematics (the Arabian ciphers, 
algebra), astronomy and astrology, natural philosophy (chemistry), 
and medicine. The Arabians translated the writings of the Greeks, 
especially those of Aristotle and Euclid, and cultivated the art of 
poetry. The literature and civilization of this people had the great- 
est influence upon the development of the Christian middle age. 



B. THE MIDDLE AGE. 

I. THE PERIOD OF THE CARLOVINGI. 

1. pepin the little (a.d. 752 768) ; charlemagne 

(a.d. 768—814). 

§ 197. The Austrasian duke, Pephi of Heristall, and Charles 
Martel, had gained the confidence of the nation by then warlike 
deeds, and the favour of the priests by their zeal in the propagation 
of Christianity. Both parties were instrumental in raising Pepin 
the Little to the throne of the Pranks. Por when the assembly of 
the nation deposed the last imbecile representative of the Merovin- 
gians (Childeric III.), and proclaimed the chief steward, Pepin, 
king, the pope confirmed the election, in the hope of finding in the 
Prank ruler a support against the Longobards and the iconoclastic 
emperor of Byzantium. In return for the royal consecration, which 
was first performed by Boniface, and afterwards by Pope Stephen 
himself, Pepin endowed the Roman chair with the portion of coast 
on the Adriatic Sea, southwards from Ravenna. This was the founda- 
tion of the temporal power of the pope. 

This Boniface (properly Wmfried), was one of those active Eng- 
lish missionaries, who, under the protection of the first Carlovingian 
monarchs, proclaimed the doctrine of a crucified Redeemer to the 
rude inhabitants of Germany. He preached the Gospel in Hesse 
(where he buflt the abbey of Pulda), founded bishoprics and colleges 
for education among the Thuringians, Pranks, and Bavarians, and 
displayed such zeal that he obtained the name of an " apostle of the 
Germans." Having been appointed archbishop of Mayence, he 
undertook in his old age another mission to the heathen Philanders, 
among whom he met with a violent death. All the bishoprics and 
colleges established by Bonifacius, were closely united with the 
Roman see ; and as these efforts were favoured by the Carlovingian 
monarchs, the pope, about the year 800, came to be looked upon as 
the head of the church in Pranconia. 

§ 198. Pepin reigned for sixteen years with vigour and renown 
over the Prank empire, which extended far into South and Central 

k2 



132 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

Germany, and which, at his death, he divided between his 
two sons, Charles and Carloinan. When the latter died, 
about three years afterwards, Charlemagne was declared 

A D 771 

sole rider of the Franks, by the voice of the estates of 
the empire. He conducted many wars, and advanced Christian cul- 
tivation and civd order. For the purpose of securing the boundaries 
of his kingdom and extending Christianity, he made war for thirty- 
one years on the Saxon confederation, which was formed by various 

pagan tribes on the Weser and Elbe. Charles took the 

A D 77'"' 

fortress of Eresburg, on the south of the Teutoburger 
forest, destroyed the national palladium — the statue of Arminius, and 
compelled the Saxons to a peace. He next proceeded against the 
Longobard king, Desiderius, in obedience to the summons of Pope 
Adrian. With an army collected together near Geneva, he crossed the 
St. Bernhard, stormed the passes of the Alps, and conquered Pavia. 
Desiderius ended his days in a cloister. Charles erected 
the Lombard throne in Milan, united Upper Italy to the 
kingdom of the -Pranks, and confirmed the gift of Pepin to the pope. 
§ 199. During the absence of Charles, the Saxons had expelled the 
Prank garrisons and re-established their ancient boundaries. Charles 
again marched into their country, subdued them, and 
compelled the chiefs of the tribes to submission at 
Paderborn. Their warlike duke, Witikind, alone, fled to the Danes 
and refused to confirm the treaty. In the two following years, 
Charles fought against the Moors in Spain, took Pamplona and Sara- 
gossa, and united the whole country as far as the Ebro to his own 
kingdom, as a Spanish province. But during his return, his rear, 
under the command of Poland, suffered a defeat in the valley of 
EoncesvaUes, in which the bravest champions of the Pranks were 
destroyed. Poland's battle at Poncesvalles was a favourite theme 
with the poets of the middle ages. The Saxons took advantage of his 
absence to make a fresh insurrection, and pursued their devastating 
course as far as the Phine. Charles hastened to the spot, gave them 
repeated overthrows, and subdued their land afresh. But when he 
attempted to employ them as militia against the Slavonic tribes in 
the East, they fell upon the Prank troops who were marching with 
them, at the Suntal (between Hanover and Hameln), and slew them. 
This demanded vengeance. The Prank emperor marched through 
the land, plundering and destroying, and then held a court of judg- 
ment at Verden on the Aller. 4500 prisoners expiated with their 
blood the crime of their brethren. Upon this, hostilities were resumed 
with fresh violence. But the battle on the Hase, which terminated 
to the disadvantage of the Saxons, put an end to the war. AVitflund 
and the other chiefs took an oath of fealty and military service, and 
allowed themselves to be baptized. The people followed their example. 



THE CARLOVINGI. 133 

Eight bishoprics (Osnabruck, Minden, Verden, Bremen, Paderborn, 
Minister, Halberstadt, Hildersheim,) provided for the maintenance 
and extension of Christianity among the Saxons. Another insurrec- 
tion, however, was occasioned a few years afterwards, by the oppres- 
sive arriere-ban, and the unwonted payment of tithes to the church, 
which resulted in 10,000 Saxon families being carried away from their 
homes, and colonies of Franks being established in their place. To 
oppose the Slavonic tribes to the east of the Elbe, Charles founded 
the Margravate of Brandenburg. 

§ 200. Shortly after, Thassilo, duke of Bavaria, at- 
tempted to render himself independent of the Frank 
power, by the assistance of the Avars who lived to the east. He 
was overpowered, and expiated his breach of faith by perpetual con- 
finement within the walls of the cloisters of Eidda. Bavaria was 
hereupon incorporated with the Erank empire, and Charles established" 
the eastern march as a check upon the wild Avars. "When Charle- 
magne had reduced all the lands from the Ebro and the Apennines 
to the Eider, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Baab and the 
Elbe, he repaired to Borne at the conclusion of the century. It was 
here that during the festival of Christmas he was invested with the 
crown of the Roman empire, in the church of St. Peter, by Leo III., 
whom he had defended against a mob of insurgents. It was hoped, 
that by this means, western Christendom might be formed into a 
single body, of which the Pope was to become the spiritual, and 
Charles the secular head. It was at this point that the long-existing 
variance between the western (Boman catholic), and the eastern 
(Creek catholic) churches, terminated in a complete separation. 

§ 201. The domestic policy of Charlemagne was not less fer- 
tile of results than the foreign. 1. He improved the government 
and the administration of justice by abolishing the office of duke, 
dividing the whole kingdom into provinces, and appointing counts 
and deputies for the conduct of the affairs of justice, and clerks of 
the treasury for the management of the crown lands and the collection 
of imposts. The laws were confirmed by the popular assemblies 
(maifeldern), in which every freeman had a share. 2. He promoted the 
cultivation of the land, and the education of the people. Agriculture 
and the breeding of cattle were encouraged, farms and villages sprang 
up, and barren heaths were converted into arable fields. He founded 
conventual schools and cathedrals, had the works of the ancient 
Boman writers transcribed, and formed a collection of old German 
heroic ballads. Learned men, like the British monk, Alcuin, and the 
historian Eginhard, from the O den- wood, had ample reason to con- 
gratulate themselves on his encouragement and support. 3. He 
favoured the clergy and the church. It was by his means that the 
former obtained their tithes and vast gifts and legacies; church music 



134 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

was improved, missionaries supported, and churclies and monasteries 
erected. Ingelheim on the Rhine, and Aix, were Chaides' favourite 
places of residence. He lies buried in tbe latter town. 

2. DISSOLUTION" Or THE FRANK EMPIRE. 

Louis the § 202. The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Debon- 

a.d. 814— ' nahe, was better fitted for the repose of a cloister than for 
84 °- the government of a warlike nation. A too hasty division 

of his kingdom among his three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, was 
the occasion of much sorrow to himself, and confusion to the empire. 
For when at a later period he proposed an alteration in favour of his 
fourth son, Charles (the Bald), the fruit of a second mar- 
riage, the elder sons took up arms against then father. 
Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on "the field of lies," near 
Strasburg, and betrayed to his own sons, was compelled by Lothaire 
to do penance in the church, and to abdicate his throne ; and was 
afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. It is true that Louis 
procured his lather's re-instatement ; but when the weak emperor, 
after the death of Pepin, by a new division of the kingdom, deprived 
Louis of Germany, in favour of his brothers, Lothaire and Charles, 
Louis raised his standard against him. This broke the old em- 
peror's heart. Pull of sorrow, he ended his days on a 
small island of the Rhine, near Ingelheim. The hostile 
brothers now turned their arms against each other. A bloody civil 
war depopulated the country, so that at last, after a battle of three 
days' duration, at Pontenaille in Burgundy, the Prank nobility refused 
to obey the arriere-ban, and by this means brought about 
the treaty of partition of Verdun. By virtue of this 
treaty, Lothaire received the imperial dignity, together with Italy, 
Burgundy, and Lorraine ; Charles the Bald, western Pranconia 
(Prance) ; and Louis the German, the lands on the right bank of the 
Rhine,— Spire, "Worms, and Mayence. 

§ 203. This division was followed by a time of great confusion, 
during which, Europe was severely harassed, on the south by the 
Arabs ; on the east by the Slavi ; and on the north and west by 
the Normans. To oppose these predatory inroads, the Carlovingian 
monarcbs, who were all men of weak and narrow minds, were obliged 
to restore the ducal office in the different provinces, and to sanction 
the hereditary authority of the Margraves, so that in a short time 
all the power fell into the hands of the nobles. By the rapid deaths 
of most of the posterity of Louis the Debonnaire, nearly the whole of 
Charles ^ ie em P u ' e 0I " Charlemagne devolved upon Charles the 

the Fat, a.d. Fat, a prince weak and indolent, and simple almost to 
87G-887- imbecility. Incapable of resisting the valiant Normans, he 
purchased a disgraceful peace from them. This proceeding so exas- 



NORMANS AND DANES. J 35 

perated the German princes, that they decreed his deposition, at 
Tribur on the Ehine, and elected his nephew, the brave Arnulf, as 
Amulf, a.d. his successor. Arnulf governed with vigour. He over- 
887—898. threw the Bomans at Louvain, and called the aid of the 
wild Magyars or Hungarians on the Ural, a people expert in horse- 
manship and archery, and who were now, under their valiant captain, 
Arpad, occupying the plains on the Danube (named after them Hun- 
garia), against the Slavi and Avars. The Avars were either sub- 
jected or compelled to retreat. But the strangers (the Hungarians), 
soon became a more dreadful scourge to Germany than either the 
Slaves or the Avars. They made their predatory inroads and 
exacted a yearly tribute, even under Louis the Child, the youthful son 
of Arnulf, who died in the flower of his age, after a glorious campaign 
in Italy. This still continued, when, after the early death of this last 
of the Carlovingian race, the German nobles, among whom the dukes 
of Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria, were pre-emi- 
Conrad I nen ^ ^ or P ower > me * together and elected Duke Conrad 
a.d. 911 — of Franconia, emperor. Germany thus became an elect- 
" ive empire. 

§ 204. The rule of the Carlovingians survived longest in France, 
Charles the ^ u ^ ^ P ossesse( l neither strength nor dignity. Under 
Simple, a.d. Charles the Simple, who had ascended the French throne 
898—929. after the deposition and subsequent death of Charles the 
Fat, the dukes and counts rendered themselves entirely independent, 
and one of the most powerful among them, Hugh of Paris, kept the 
imbecile king in strict confinement. France, on the other hand, was 
delivered from the devastating forays of the Normans, by Charles 
admitting duke Bollo into the province named after them, Normandy, 
upon condition, that he and his followers would suffer themselves to 
be baptized, and recognise the king as their suzerain. The Normans, 
a people readily susceptible of civilization, soon acquired the lan- 
guage, manners, and customs of the Franks. Charles the Simple 
was followed by two other kings of the Carlovingian race ; but their 
power was at last so limited that they possessed nothing but the town 
of Laon, with the surrounding country ; every thing else had fallen 
into the hands of the insolent nobility. After the death of the 
Hugh Capet childless Louis V., Hugh Capet, son and hen of Hugh 
a.d. 987— of Paris, assumed the title of king, and put to death in 
9 prison Louis' uncle, Charles of Lorraine, who attempted 

to assert his right to the throne by force of arms. 



II. NORMANS AND DANES. 

§ 205. The inhabitants of the Scandinavian peninsula belong to 
the German race, and share with it the violent passion for liberty, 



13(3 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

love of action, and disposition to wander, as well as language, religion, 
and manners. Divided into numerous tribes, they undertook vast 
expeditions to all quarters, and trusted their lives and property on 
the stormy waves in their light rowing vessels. Under the name of 
Normals, they ravaged the coasts of the North Sea, sailed up the 
mouths of rivers in their small ships, and returned laden with booty 
to their homes ; as Danes they were feared by the English, from 
whom they exacted a heavy tribute (Danegeld). The remote island 
of Iceland was discovered and peopled by Norwegians, who founded 
a nourishing republic there, with the religion, language, laws, and 
institutions of the mother country ; and Norman Varangians were 
invited as rulers by the Slavonic inhabitants of the shores of the 
Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. Ruric, the warlike prince of the 
Russians and of the Varangian race, accepted the invitation, estab- 
lished himself in Novogorod, and became the progenitor of a race that 
ruled over Russia till the end of the sixteenth century, but adopted 
the manners and language of the aborigines. Greenland was dis- 
covered and peopled from Iceland. Even America is said to have 
been known to the Normans. The Normans loved war, the chase, 
and the exercise of arms ; agriculture and the breeding of cattle they 
left to the Slaves. Good faith was their most prominent virtue, and 
a love of poetry the solitary tender feeling indulged by these rude 
men. The singers (scalds), celebrated the illustrious deeds of their 
forefathers in melancholy songs and legends. The most celebrated 
collection of such sacred and heroic songs is called the Edda. 

§ 206. England, under the weak successors of Egbert (§ 185), 
suffered the most severely from the Danes. They plundered the 
Alfred the coasts and the shores of the rivers, and destroyed the 
Great, a.d. Christian churches. Even Alfred the Great was thrust 
871—901. £ or a g^ort time from his throne by them, until he con- 
trived, by dint of cunning, courage, and watchfulness, to put an end 
to their inroads. Crowds of them who had been converted to Chris- 
tianity were permitted to settle in Northumberland. After this, 
Alfred devoted himself to the internal improvement of his people. 
Like Charlemagne, he divided his land into communities and dis- 
tricts, and placed counts and aldermen over them to conduct the 
affairs of justice ; he founded schools and churches, made a collection 
of the Anglo-Saxon heroic ballads, and translated the writings of 
Boethius (§ 182). But when the Anglo-Saxon poptdation, under his 
successors, slaughtered several thousands of the Danes in Northum- 
berland (the Danish vespers), Swein the Fortunate, king of Denmark 
Canute tlie ail( ^ Norway, recommenced the predatory incursions with 
Great, a.d. such success, that his son, Canute the Great, united the 
English crown to the Danish and Norwegian. He 
governed justly and wisely. After his death, and that of his son, 



THE GERMANO-ROMAN EMPIRE. ]37 

Edward the Confessor, a descendant of the ancient royal 
Confessor, family, ascended the throne. He had resided a long time 
a.d. 1041 — " n Normandy, and imbibed a preference for Erench- 
Norman customs. It was for this reason, that during his 
reign he encouraged foreigners to the prejudice of the natives, and 
appointed "William, Duke of Normandy, heir to his crown, in the 
event of his death without issue. This was resisted by the nation, 
who elected the chivalrous Harold to be king. But by the battle 
of Hastings, in which Harold and the flower of the 
Anglo-Saxon nobility fell on the field, "William the Con- 
queror was made master of England, where he proceeded with great 
severity to establish a new condition of things. He endowed his 
Norman knights with the estates of the Anglo-Saxon landlords, in- 
troduced the Erench language and the Norman law, and presented 
the richest benefices of the chiu'ch to his friends. 

~§ 207. A short time before, Robert Gfuiscard, a Norman 
noble, had made himself master, by his courage and* 
cunning, of the greater part of Lower Italy. He called himself 
Duke of Aptdia and Calabria, and acknowledged the pope as his feudal 
superior. His heroic son, Bohemond, increased this terri- 
tory by further conquests. But Robert's family soon 
Roger II became extinct, upon which his brother's son, Roger II., 
a.d. 1130— united Sicily with Lower Italy, obtained from the pope the 
• title of king, and established the kingdom of Naples and 

Sicily. Eor fifty-six years these rich and beautiful lands remained in 
the possession of Roger and his descendants ; they then passed into 
the house of Hohenstanfen. 



III. THE SUPREMACY OF THE GERMANO-ROMAN EMPIRE. 
1. THE HOUSE OE SAXONY (919 — 1024). 

§ 208. The violence of the nobles, and the destructive inroads of 
the Hungarians, had reduced Germany to a wfld and lawless state. 
The first freely elected emperor, Conrad the Salic (§ 204), endea- 
voured to correct these evils by harshness and severity, and ordered 
the insubordinate Count Erchanger and Berthold von Allemanien to 
be beheaded as examples. But as he saw that his family did not pos- 
sess sufficient political influence, he favoured the advancement of his 
, powerful rival, Henry I. (the Eowler), of Saxony. This 

Fowler, a.d. energetic prince enlarged the boundaries of the empire 
919-936. on the north, where he established the march of Schleswig 
against the Danes ; on the west, where he again won back Lorraine 
to the empire ; and on the east, where the march of Meissen 
w T as intended to keep the Slavi in check. He purchased a nine 
years' truce from the Magyars, and employed the time in the im- 



138 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE A.GE. 

provemont of tb.e army, and in erecting Btrong fortresses. By the 

building oi these citadels, which grevs up with bime into (owns, 

Henrj became the originator of the burgher class, and earned the 

name of the Founder of Cities. Relying on these preparations, he 

refused bhe Hungarians al the termination of the truce the tribute 

that bad hitherto been paid; and when they undertook an expedition 

for the purpose of revenging themselves, he gave them a 

severe defeat at the battle of Merseburg. 

8 209. Otto I. the Great, trod in the steps of his father. 
( )U<> the ° . ' 

Great, \..d. He sought, like him, to preserve the peace of the empire 

936—973. by conferring dukedoms and bishoprics on bis friends 
and relatives; he also enlarged the bounds of his territories, and dif- 
fused Christianity; and when the Hungarians again renewed I heir 
inroads upon Germany, this valiant, prince defeated them with such 
slaughter in the Lechfeld near Augsburg, that only a lew out of the 
vast multitude escaped; from this time (here was an end 

a d 055 

of their depredations. ( ihristianity, which towards I he end 
of the century, in the reign of King Stephen the Pious, the Lawgiver 
;ind regulator of the country, penetrated even into Hungary, pro- 
duced gentler manners, and a more peaceable disposition. Otto's at- 
tainment of the imperial dignity was an occurrence pregnant with 

results for Germany, which from this time, remained part 
a d 962. . . 

of " the holy Boman empire of the (J en nan nation." By 

lus marriage with Adelheid, queen of Burgundy and Upper Italy, 
who had appealed to him for protection against the attempts of 
Berenger of [vrea, Otto gained the kingdom of Italy, and was 
investedin Milan with the Lombard crown. Hereupon he proceeded to 
Rome, obtained the imperial Roman crown, established the protector- 
ship of I lie ( J en i em emperor over the papal chair, and exacted an oath 
from the Romans, that they would \u-w\- acknowledge a pope without 
the knowledge and consent of himself or his successors. This pro- 
tectorship the popes were afterwards unwilling to allow to be valid. 
Otto II. a.d. § 210. The ten years of Otto II. 's reign were tilled 
»T-i -983. with contests with the turbulent nobility in Germany 
and Italy; with the French, who wished to get possession of Lorraine ; 
and with the Greeks iii Lower Italy, where he laid claim to the 
Byzantine possessions as the dowry of his wile Theophania. Being 
Overcome near Basantello, he fell into the hands of the enemy, from 
Otto III., a.d. whom he only escaped by his skill in swimming. His 
983—1002. son, Otto I I I., was superior to most of his contemporaries 
in cultivation and learned acquirements, in which he had been 
instructed by the celebrated Gerbert, under the guidance of his 

mother Theophania, and his grandmother Adelheid, so that- he was 
called the Imperial Prodigy; hut he was wanting in the vigour neces- 
Sary to the ruler of a rude and warlike people. 1 1 is love for Greek 



THE HOUSE OF FRANCONIA. J 39 

and Italian refinement induced him to entertain the notion of making 
Eome the metropolis of his kingdom, but all his plans were thwarted 
by his early death. 

§ 211. After many struggles, Henry II. of Bavaria, a relative 
of the Ottos, succeeded him in the empire. His love for the church 
and the clergy, which he displayed more particidarly in founding the 
cathedral and bishopric of Bamberg, procured him the surname of 
Saint. When this cathedral was consecrated by the pope in person, 
it was from his hands that the emperor received the signs of his impe- 
rial power, the sceptre and the golden apple ; and although during his 
Roman expeditions he exercised the right of protectorship over the 
holy city, yet the ceremonies practised on the occasion afforded a 
pretext to succeeding popes to represent the imperial throne as their 
fief. Under Henry II. and the mditary bustle of the following age, 
the civilization that had flourished in Magdeburg, Halle, Bremen, 
and Bardewick, during the reign of the Ottos, and under the influence 
of the foreign empress and Otto II. 's sisters, was again extinguished. 
The mathematical science of Gerbert, who was versed in Greek and 
Arabian learning, the elements of architecture, sculpture, and trade, 
in which the Bishop Bernhard, about the time of Silvester II. 's 
assumption of the chair of St. Peter, particularly distinguished him- 
self, the Latin poetry of Khoswitha and others found little study or 
encouragement ; nevertheless the colleges founded by the Ottos stfll 
preserved the germs of civilization. 

2. THE HOUSE OF EEAKC05TIA. 

§ 212. . Conrad II. was more bent upon enlarging his kingdom and 
Conrad II obtaining knightly renown, than upon governing in peace. 
a.d. 1024— After he had been invested with the iron crown of the 
1039. Lombards in Milan, and the imperial diadem in Eome, he 

added to his dominions the kingdom of Burgundy on the Rhone and 
the Jura. This involved him in many quarrels both with the Burgun- 
dian nobles and bishops, who looked upon themselves as independent 
princes ; and, with his son-in-law Ernest, of Swabia, who asserted a 
more valid claim to the empire, and raised the standard of rebellion in 
the south of Germany, in conjunction with his friend Welf. Both 
were subdued after a long struggle, and the deeds and fate of the 
chivalrous duke Ernest supplied the materials for poetry and popular 
legends. Conrad and his successor lie buried in the cathedral of Spire, 
of which magnificent structure the former was the commencer. Con- 
Henry III ra( i' s son > Henry III., was a man of great power, under 
a.d. 1039— whose reign Germany attained its greatest limits ; even 
1056. Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary acknowledged the supre- 

macy of the Germano-Eoman emperor. For the purpose of sup- 
pressing the insolence of the turbulent nobles of the kingdom, he 



J 40 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

entertained the project of founding an absolute, imperial, hereditary 
monarchy, and either of abolishing the office of duke in Germany, or 
making it entirely dependent upon the emperor. In the same manner, 
he took advantage of a division in the church, to depose the three 
contending popes, and to raise the German bishops in succession to 
the papal chair. He attempted to elevate the imperial power above 
the princes of Germany, as well as over the court of Borne. He 
enforced respect throughout his whole kingdom for the "peace of 
God," according to which, no weapons might be used between 
the evening of Wednesday and Monday morning; an arrangement 
which, in that iron time, was the -only means of preserving a vestige 
of order. He also preserved himself unspotted from the crime of 
simony, i. e. the disposing of property or dignities of the church for 
money or worldly considerations. 

§ 213. Henry III.'s son was the highly-gifted but misled Henry 
IV., who, from the age of five years, was under the tutelage of his 
judicious mother, till the ambitious Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, 
succeeded in getting the young emperor into his power. The severe 
method of education employed by this prelate disgusted Henry, who 
was only the more pleased with the magnificent Bishop Adelbert, of 
Bremen, who snatched him from the hands of Hanno, and made him- 
self agreeable to the young prince by flattery, and the gratification of 
his sensual inclinations. The emperor established his residence at 
Goslar, for the purpose of chastising the Saxons, among whom, 
Henry's rival, Otto of Nordheim, had many adherents. He here 
established a riotous court ; oppressed and maltreated both the 
nobles and people; and, in the insolence of youth, disturbed ? with his 
companions, the security of the neighbouring country. The Saxon 
nobility at length took up arms under the conduct of Otto ; the for- 
tresses were taken, the strong citadel of Harzburg destroyed, and the 
emperor compelled to take flight. This proved the commencement of 
a destructive war, which was terminated to the disadvantage of the 
Saxons, by the superior talents of Henry, and his victory 
on the Unstruth. This finally induced them to call in 
the pope as umpire. 

§ 214. The chair of Borne was at that time occupied by Gregory 
VII., a prelate of resolute will and decided temper, who cherished 
the purpose of rendering the church independent of the sccidar 
authority, and of exalting the papacy above the power of the 
emperor, and that of every other temporal prince. With this object, 
lie had induced his predecessors to withdraw the election of pope 
from the hands of the Boman people, and to transfer it to the newly- 
created college of cardinals. After his elevation, he turned his atten- 
tion to the purifying of the church ; he accordingly issued a strict prohi- 
bition against all simony, deposed and banished the bishops who had 



THE HOUSE OF FRANCONIA. 141 

obtained their offices by purchase, and forbade lay investiture (ap- 
pointment to church offices by a temporal prince) ; and, for the pur- 
pose of binding the clergy more closely to the church, he passed a 
law which enforced a rigid observance of celibacy by all persons of 
the priestly condition. The appeal to his arbitration by the Saxons 
came very opportunely to the daring priest after these arrangements ; 
it served to confirm the principle, that the pope, as Christ's vice- 
gerent, was superior to all temporal rulers, and that emperors, kings, 
and princes, were consequently his vassals. He summoned Henry 
IT. before his judgment-seat. Instead of obeying the summons, the 
emperor obtained a resolution from a council of the church assembled 
at Worms, which declared the pope to be deposed, and this reso- 
lution he forwarded to Gregory with a contemptuous letter. Upon 
this, Gregory excommunicated Henry and his adherents, and deposed 
him from the crown. This happened at a time when Henry's con- 
duct towards the Saxons, and his matrimonial quarrel with his vir- 
tuous wife, from whom he attempted to get himself separated by the 
archbishop of Mayence, created universal dissatisfaction. He soon 
found himself forsaken by his people, and the princes who assembled 
at Tribur announced to him his deposition, unless he were released 
from the excommunication within a year. Upon this, Henry hastened 
across the Alps, in the midst of a severe winter, to the 

at) 1 077 

pope, who was residing at the castle Canossa ; but it was 
not until after waiting three days barefoot, and in the dress of a peni- 
tent, in the court of the castle, that he was admitted to an audience. 
After this humiliation the ban was withdrawn. 

§ 215. During Henry's absence, his enemies had raised Rudolf, 
duke of Swabia, to the imperial throne. A civil war broke out in 
consequence, in which Henry remained the victor. Rudolf, having 
lost a hand in the battle of the Elster, died shortly afterwards, upon 
which, Henry undertook an expedition to revenge himself 
upon Gregory, who, deceived by false intelligence respect- 
ing the victory, had renewed the ^excommunication. He left the 
finishing of the war in Germany to his son-in-law, Frederick of 
Hohenstaufen, whom he had created dake of Swabia, and then 
marched with his army over the Alps. A council of the church, 
assembled by him at Brixen, deposed Gregory and elected 
Clement III., from whom Henry immediately received 
the crown. It is true, that "Gregory still maintained himself for 
some time in the castle of Angelo, under the protection of Eobert 
Guiscard (§ 208), with whom he had entered into an alliance; but 
the dreadful excesses of the Normans produced so much exasperation 
among the Eomans, that the pope thought it most advis- 
A,D " ' able to take refuge in Salerno, where he died in the fol- 
lowing year. But Henry's troubles were not yet at an end. Two 



142 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

rival emperors arose in GTermany, and in Italy the successor of 
Gregory created him a crowd of enemies, and renewed the sentence 
of excommunication. At length his own misguided children rose 
against him. Conrad was disowned by him, and died in disgrace ; 
but in a short time after, Henry, who was already crowned, drew the 
sword against his father, took him prisoner, and when he escaped 
from confinement, continued the war against him so long, that Henry 
IV., bowed down by misery and misfortune, ended his days at Liege. 
But even now he was not at rest. For five years his dead body 
remained unburied in an unconsecrated chapel at Spire, before it was 
allowed to be interred in the imperial sepulchre. 

§ 216. As long as Henry V. continued the disgraceful contest with 
Henry V. a.d. ^is father, so long he remained the friend of the pope. 
HOC— 1125. But scarcely was he in exclusive possession of the im- 
perial dignity, before he quarrelled with his ally on the subject of 
investiture. He seized upon the pope and cardinals, and succeeded, 
despite the thunders of excommunication by which he was assailed, 
in effecting a fair compromise of the subject of dispute, by means of 
the concordat of "Worms. It was arranged by this contract, that the 
bishops and abbots should be freely elected and installed in their 
offices by the pope, but that they should be endowed with their tem- 
poralities and privileges by the king with his sceptre. 

The severity with which Henry had humbled the insolent princes 
of the empire, prevented them from raising to the throne the nearest 
relative of the house of Franconia, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, upon 
L thaire the Henry's death without children. They elected Lothaire 
Saxon, a.d. the Saxon, the heir of Otto of Mordheim, but produced a 
1120—1137. fatal division by this step. For when the brothers of the 
Hohenstaufen fanuly refused to do homage to the new emperor, 
Lothaire united himself with Henry the Proud of Bavaria, of the 
house of Welf, by giving him his daughter in marriage, and increas- 
ing the vast possessions of this family by the dukedom of Saxony. 
The Hohenstaufens were unable to resist such superior power, and 
they were compelled to acknowledge Lothaire emperor, and to accom- 
pany him in his Italian campaign. 



IV. THE ASCENDANCY OF THE CHURCH IN THE TIME OF THE 

CRUSADES. 
1. THE CRUSADES. 

§ 217. Ever since the fourth century, it had been a prevalent custom 
to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for the health of the soul 
and the expiation of a sinful life, and to pray, at what was believed to 
be the site of the sepulchre of Christ, and where, in consequence, the 
Empress Helena had erected a church. These pilgrimages became more 



THE CRUSADES. 143 

numerous as the Christian faith acquired more influence over the minds 
of men. As long as the mercantile Arabians retained possession of the 
land, the pilgrims came and went without molestation ; hut when 
Syria and Palestine were conquered by the Seljookian Turks, the 
native Christians, as well as the pilgrims, were exposed to severe 
oppression. They were compelled to pay a heavy tax, and were fre- 
quently robbed, maltreated, and killed. At this juncture, a pilgrim, 
Peter of Amiens, who was returning from Jerusalem, presented him- 
self before Pope Urban II., described the sufferings of the Christians 
in the East, and received the charge of wandering through town and 
country, and preparing the minds of men for the great enterprise of 
recovering the Holy Land from the hands of the infidels. "Wonder- 
ful was the agitation produced in all lands by the descriptions of the 
eloquent and meagre-visaged pilgrim. When the pope, in consequence, 
held an assembly at Clermont, in the south of Prance, at 
which several bishops and nobles, and a numberless crowd 
of people of all conditions were present, called upon the "West to arm 
itself against the East, and concluded his passionate address by an 
exhortation to every one, " To deny himself and take up his cross, that 
he might win Christ." The shout of " It is the will of God," pealed 
from every throat, and thousands fell on their knees, and demanded 
to be at once admitted among the number of the sacred warriors. 
They attached a red cross to the right shoulder, from which the new 
brotherhood received the name of crusaders. Complete remission of 
sins, and an everlasting reward in heaven was promised to them. 
This was the commencement of the first crusade of 1096 — 1099. 

§ 218. A mighty enthusiasm took possession of all minds ; no sex, 
age, or condition, would be left behind. Many were too impatient 
to wait for the preparations of the princes, a disorderly and half-armed 
crowd, under the direction of Peter of Amiens, and a 
Prench knight, Walter the PennUess, marched through 
Germany towards Hungary, in their way to Constantinople. When 
they were denied the necessaries of life in Bulgaria, they stormed 
Belgrade, and filled the country with robbery and murder. Here- 
upon the inhabitants rose upon them and slaughtered them by 
thousands. The remnant reached Constantinople with their leaders, 
but were nearly all destroyed in Asia Minor by the Seljooks. The dis- 
orderly crowd, which, after a bloody persecution of the Jews, marched 
out of the Rhenish towns, Strasburg, Worms, Mayence, &c, under 
the conduct of the priest, Gottschalk, and the count Enrico of 
Leiningen, fared no better. 

§ 219. A hundred thousand men had already perished, when the 
high-spirited Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, marched 
towards Constantinople by the same path, with his brothers and a 
vast host of well-appointed knights, whilst Hugh of Vermandois, the 



141 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

brother of the French king, and the Norman prince, Bohemond of 
Lower Italy, with his chivalrous nephew, Tancred, departed by sea to 
the same destination. After they had promised the Byzantine 
emperor, Alexander Comnenus, the restoration of all the Greek 
towns that had formerly belonged to the Eastern empire, they were 
transported into Asia. A review took place in a plain near Nicaea, 
and the army was found to consist of 100,000 cavalry, and 300,000 
foot, fit for battle. The most celebrated of the leaders, besides those 
already named, were Robert of Normandy, son of "William the Con- 
queror (§ 207) ; Stephen of Blois, who numbered as many castles as 
there are days in the year ; the rich and powerful Count Raymond of 
Toulouse, and others. The siege and capture of Nica?a was the first 
important deeds of arms achieved by the crusaders. From this point, 
their march proceeded southwards through the dominions of the 
sultan of Iconium. The Seljooks suffered a defeat in the battle of 
Dorykeum. But the Christian army was soon reduced to the greatest 
straits by the want of the necessaries of life, so that many returned 
home, and others, separating themselves from the main body, estab- 
lished independent governments among the pagans. In this way, 
Baldwin, Godfrey's brother, established himself in Edessa on the 
Euphrates. At length the host reached the beautiful 
territory of Autioch. But the siege of this strong and 
amply provided city presented so many difficulties to the unpractised 
knights, that it was only after an investment of nine months that 
they obtained possession of it by a stratagem of the crafty Bohe- 
mond, who contrived that a door should be treacherously left open to 
him. The punishment inflicted by the Christians on the conquered 
city was frightful. But they had scarcely held possession of it for 
three days before the Seljook sultan of Mosul made his appearance, 
and enclosed the place with an innumerable army. The crusaders 
were in a short time so reduced by famine, that then- destruction 
appeared inevitable. From this perilous position they were rescued 
by a holy lance that was found in the church of St. Peter in Autioch, 
and the discovery of which produced such enthusiasm amongst them, 
that, sallying out of the city, they put to flight a very superior army 
of the besiegers, and opened for themselves the road to Jerusalem. 
The faith in the genuineness of the lance soon however disappeared, 
when the priest who had discovered it died from the consequences of 
the divine ordeal to which he was subjected. 

§ 220. The army now compelled the contending princes to a rapid 

march. When they arrived, about the time of Pentecost, 

to the heights above Bamla and Emaus, from whence 

Jerusalem first becomes visible, they fell upon their knees in an 

ecstasy of devotion, shed tears of joy, and glorified God with psalms 

of thanksgiving. But the conquest of this strong city was a difficult 



THE CRUSADES. 145 

undertaking for an army of pilgrims, wearied with travel,, and unpro- 
vided with the necessary engines. The want of water, and the 
burning heat, proved more destructive than the arrows of the 
enemy. But the newly-aroused enthusiasm triumphed over all 
15th July, obstacles. After a siege of thirty-nine days, Jerusalem 
a.d. 1099. -was at length taken by the crusaders after a two days' 
storm, accompanied by the shouts, "It is the will of God," " God 
helps us." The fate of the vanquished was frightful. The steps of 
the mosques were washed by the blood of 10,000 slaughtered Sara- 
cens ; the Jews were burnt in their synagogue ; neither age nor sex 
was spared, the streets were filled with corpses, blood, and mutilated 
limbs. It was only after the thirst for revenge and plunder had been 
slaked, that Christian humility again resumed its empire over the 
mind, and the same men who a short time before had been raging 
like ravenous beasts, might now be seen with bare feet and uncovered 
heads, marching with songs of praise to the church of the holy sepul- 
chre, to thank God with fervent devotion for the success vouchsafed 
to their enterprise. 

§ 221. The next step was to elect a king of Jerusalem. The choice 
fell upon the pious and valiant Godfrey of Bouillon, who refused how- 
ever to wear a kingly diadem on the spot where the Saviour of the 
world had bled beneath a crown of thorns. He rejected the outward 
symbols of power, and called himself the defender of the holy sepulchre. 
The new kingdom of Jerusalem was arranged according to the prin- 
ciples of the "Western feudal system (§ 241). Godfrey, moreover, won 
August, the glorious victory at Ascalon, over the army of the 

a.d. 1099. Egyptian sultan, but died during the following year, from 
the effects of the climate and his extreme exertions. His brother, 
Baldwin, succeeded to the government, and assumed the title of 
king. 

§ 222. The kingdom of Jerusalem had severe encounters to sustain 
with the infidels. When reinforcements no longer arrived from the 
West, the situation of the Christians became extremely precarious, 
especially after the powerful sultan of Mosul had taken and destroyed 
Edessa, and threatened their borders from the East. At this junc- 
ad 1147 ture, St. Bernhard, abbot of Clairvaux, in Burgundy, 
aroused afresh the slumbering zeal for religion, and was 
a.d. 49. ^ e originator of the second ckttsade. The authority of 
this pious man was so great, that Louis VII. of Erance yielded 
obedience to his exhortations, and even Conrad III. was unable to 
resist the fiery eloquence with which he addressed him in the cathe- 
dral of Spire. Conrad assumed the cross, and marched with a 
stately army through Constantinople into Asia Minor. But here he 
was decoyed by the artifice of the Greek generals into a water- 
less desert, where the crusaders were suddenly attacked by innu- 



146 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

nierable squadrons of Turkish cavalry, who gave them so signal an 
overthrow, that scarcely a tenth part escaped with Conrad into Con- 
stantinople. The French army that marched along the coast fared 
no "better. The greater number of the pilgrims perished either by 
the sword of the enemy, or by hunger and fatigue. The shattered 
forces of the two kings at length reached Jerusalem, but were unable 
to perform any action of importance, so that the position of the 
Christian kingdom became from day to day more difficult, especially, 
as shortly after their retreat, the magnanimous and valiant Curd, 
Saladin, made himself master of Egypt, and united in a short time all 
the lands between Cairo and Aleppo under his sceptre. The kingdom 
of Jerusalem was soon in distress. Saladin granted a truce; but when 
this was violated by a Christian knight, who had audaciously inter- 
rupted the passage of Saladin's mother, robbed her of her treasures, 
and slaughtered her attendants, the sultan took the field with his 
army. The battle of Tiberias was decided against the 
Christian s. King Guy and many of his nobles were taken 
prisoners ; Joppa, Sidon, Acre, and many other towns fell into the 
hands of the conqueror, and at length Jerusalem was also taken. The 
crosses were torn down, and the furniture of the churches destroyed, 
but the inhabitants were treated with forbearance. Saladin, far 
superior in virtue to his Christian adversaries, did not stain his triumph 
with cruelty. 

§ 223. The news of the taking of Jerusalem occasioned the utmost 
a.d. 1189. alarm throughout the whole West, and gave rise to the 
a.d. 1192. third crusade. From the southernmost point of Italy 
to the rude mountains of Scandinavia, armed bands streamed 
towards the Holy Land. Those who remained behind paid a tax 
(Saladin's tenth). The three most powerful monarchs of the West, 
Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Philip Augustus II. of France, 
and Richard Lion-heart of England, assumed the cross. The 
Emperor Frederick, with a well-appointed army, took the way by land 
to Asia Minor, defeated the sultan of Iconium in a furious battle 
near the walls of his chief city, and displayed prudence, courage, and 
resolution in the whole undertaking. But when the old hero 
attempted, with the boldness of youth, to cross the rapid mountain 
stream of the Saleph, into the South of Asia Minor, he was carried 
away by the torrent. His dead body was dragged on shore near 
Seleucia. Some of the knights returned home, and others followed 
the second son of the emperor, Frederick of Swabia, to Palestine, 
where they took part in the siege of Acre. The kings of France and 
England, who had taken the sea voyage by Sicily, met shortly after 
before this town. Their united efforts were crowned by the fall of 
Acre, where Richard distinguished himself as much by his severity, 
pride, and cruelty, as by his valour and heroism. The German banner 



THE CRUSADES. J 47 

that duke Leopold of Austria had first planted on the battlements, 
was torn down and trampled under foot by the commands of Richard ; 
and when the stipidated ransom for the captive Saracens was not paid 
at the appointed moment, he ordered 3500 of these unfortunates to 
be put to the sword. Richard's name was the terror of the East. 
But despite all his strength and bravery, he was unable to take 
Jerusalem. Quarrels between Richard and Philip Augustus (who 
returned home after the capture of Acre), and dissensions among the 
crusaders, checked the enterprise. After the conclusion of a treaty, 
by which the sea-coast from Tyre to Joppa, and undisturbed access to 
the holy places was assured to the Christians, Richard also turned 
homewards. Having been cast by a storm on the coast of Italy, he 
attempted to pursue his journey through Germany, but was seized 
near Vienna, and given up to the avaricious emperor Henry VI., who 
shut him up in the castle of Trifels, and only released him on the 
payment of a heavy ransom. 

a.d. 1203. § 224. The fourth crusade had a termination 

a.d. 1204. altogether peculiar. The knights of Prance and Italy 
assembled together at Venice in the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, under Baldwin of Flanders, for the purpose of getting them- 
selves conveyed to the Holy Land. Whilst here, the Byzantine prince, 
Alexius, whose father, Isaac Angelus, had been deprived of the throne, 
rendered blind, and shut up in prison by his own brother, presented 
himself before them, and implored their assistance against the usurper. 
Alexius prevailed upon the crusaders by the promise of vast rewards. 
They sailed for Constantinople under the command of the blind doge, 
Dandolo of Venice, who was then in his ninetieth year, took the city, 
and placed Alexius and his father on the throne. But when they 
insolently demanded the fulfilment of the promises made to them, the 
populace excited an insurrection, during which, Alexius was killed, 
and his father died of fright, whilst the leader of the tumult was 
raised to the government. Upon this, the Franks stormed Constan- 
tinople, plundered the churches, palaces, and dwelling-houses, destroyed 
the noblest works of art and antiquity, and filled the whole city with 
terror and outrage. They flung the emperor from a pillar, and then 
divided the Byzantine kingdom. The newly-established Latin empire, 
with its chief city, Constantinople, fell to the share of the heroic 
Baldwin; the Venetians appropriated the lands on the coast and 
several islands of the iEgean Sea, and gained possession of the whole 
trade of the East ; the count of Montferrat received Macedonia and 
Greece under the title of the kingdom of Thessalonica ; Villehar- 
douin, the describer of this transaction, became duke of Achaia ; 
Athens and other Greek towns were shared among the Erank 
nobles. As before, in Jerusalem, so here, the feudal monarchy was 
established under the "Western forms, by which means, the greater 

l2 



148 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

part of the old population was reduced to the condition of serfdom. 
But the new empire had no solid foundation nor any long continu- 
ance. It preserved itself with difficulty for half a century, hy aid 
from the "West against its numerous enemies ; the greater 

A.D. 12G1. . . 

part of it then returned to Michael Palseologus, a 
descendant of the ancient imperial family, who had estahlished an 
iudependent government in Nicrea. 

§ 225. This crusade, however, was without results as far as Jerusa- 
lem was concerned, and as the Latin kingdom besides, drew away the 
strength from the Holy Land, the latter soon fell into distress. The 
separate hands, that without leaders and without system, from time to 
time ventured upon this hazardous undertaking, brought as little 
assistance to the closely-pressed kingdom as did the fanatical enthu- 
siasm that impelled crowds of children to assume the 
cross. Nearly 20,000 children left then paternal homes 
for the purpose of reaching the holy sepulchre, but either perished 
by hunger and exhaustion, or were sold for slaves by rapacious mer- 
chants and pirates. The expedition to Egypt, undertaken by Andrew 
of Hungary and other princes, was also unproductive of any per- 
manent result. With such examples before him, the excommunicated 
emperor, Frederick II., undertook the fifth ckusade, at a 
time when the sultan of Egypt was engaged in a war 
with the governor of Damascus, respecting the possession of Syria 
and Palestine. But the pope was indignant with the excommunicated 
man, and forbade all Christian warriors to support his undertaking ; 
and when Frederick nevertheless succeeded, by dexterously availing 

himself of circumstances, in bringing the sultan to a 
a.d. 1229. . 

treaty, by which Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, 

together with their territories and the whole of the sea-coast between 
Joppa and Sidon were ceded to the Christians, the pope fulminated 
an excommunication against the city and the holy sepulchre, so that 
Frederick II. was obliged to place the crown of Jerusalem on his 
oWn head, without either a mass or the consecration of the Church. 
Hated and betrayed by the Christian knights and priests in Jeru- 
salem, Frederick, with shattered health, retired from the holy land. 
Fourteen years afterwards, the Carismians, a savage Eastern race, 
poured themselves into Palestine, carrying death and destruction in 
their train. They took Jerusalem, destroyed the holy sepulchre, and 
tore the bones of the kings from their graves. The flower of the 
Christian chivalrv fell at Gaza beneath then blows. Acre 

A D 1^44 

and a few other towns on the coast was all that remained 
to the Christians. 

§ 226. Upon receipt of this intelligence, Louis IX. (the Saint), of 
France, with many of his nobles, took the cross and sailed by Cyprus 
to Egypt. The strong frontier town of Damietta fell into the hands 



THE CRUSADES. 149 

of the Franks, but when they proceeded up the Nile to attack Cairo, 
the army was enclosed between the canals and an arm of the river, 
whilst the fleet was destroyed by the Greek fire. After the king's 
brother and the bravest knights had fallen, Louis and the remainder 
of the army were taken prisoners, and he was compelled to ransom 
himself and a portion of his followers by the payment of a large sum 
of money and the surrender of the conquered towns. In the mean- 
while, the government of Egypt had fallen into the hands of the 
warlike Mamelukes, the former slaves of the Curds. Six- 
teen years after his return, Louis again undertook another 
crusade, which however he first directed against the piratical Sara- 
cens at Tunis in Northern Africa, partly to compel them to pay 
tribute, and partly with a hope of introducing Christianity amongst 
them. He had already laid siege to their principal city, when the 
unusual heat produced an infectious disease which hurried the king 
himself and many of his warriors into the grave. The French 
leaders concluded a hasty treaty with the Saracens, and returned 
home. The feeble remains of the kingdom of Jerusalem were more 
and more threatened by the warlike Mamelukes. When Antioch fell 
into their hands, and Acre or Ptolemais was stormed after an heroic 
defence, the Frank Christians that were still alive volun- 

A.D. 1291. 

tarily retired from Syria, that for the last two hundred 
years had been drenched by the blood of so many millions. 

§ 227. The consequences of the crusades were of vast importance 
to the progress of the European races. — 1. Cultivation of mind was 
forwarded by them, inasmuch as an acquaintance with foreign lands 
and nations enlarged the hitherto contracted sphere of human know- 
ledge, gave men an insight into the sciences and arts of other people, 
and enlightened their minds with regard to the world and human 
relations. — 2. They ennobled the knightly class by furnishing a more 
elevated aim to their efforts, and gave occasion for the establishment 
of fresh orders, who presented a model of chivalry, and were supposed 
to combine all the knightly virtues. Of these orders, those which 
most distinguished themselves were the knights of St. John (Hos- 
pitallers), the Templars, and the Teutonic knights. They combined 
the spirit of the knight and the monk ; for, in addition to the three 
conventual vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, they joined a 
fourth, war to the infidels, and protection to pilgrims. 

a.) The order of St. John was divided into three classes : serving 

brothers, who were devoted to the care of sick pilgrims; priests, who 

ministered to the affairs of religion; and knights, who fought with the 

infidels and escorted pilgrims. After the loss of the Holy Land, they 

obtained the island of Rhodes, and when they were compelled after a 

most desperate resistance to relinquish this to the Otto- 
a d 1522 

mans, the island of Malta was presented to them by the 



150 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

emperor Charles V. — 1>.) The Templars acquired vast wealth by 
donations and legacies. After the loss of their possessions in Pales- 
tine, the greater number of their members returned to France, where 
they gave themselves up to infidelity and a life of voluptuousness, 
which finally occasioned the dissolution of their order (§ 256). The 
order of Teutonic knights is less renowned for its deeds in Palestine 
than its services in the civilization of the countries on the shores of 
the Baltic. Summoned to defend the germs of Christianity against 
the heathen Prussians on the banks of the Vistula, the order, after 
many bloody encounters, succeeded in converting the lands between 
the Vistula and the Niemen to Christianity, and introducing the 
German manners, language, and cidtivation. The cities of Culm, 
Thorn, Elbing, Conigsburg, and others, arose under the influence of 
the active traders of Bremen and Lubeck. Bishoprics and churches 
were founded; the woods were cleared and converted into arable 
land, G-erman industry and Grerman civilization produced a complete 
transformation ; but the ancient freedom of the people was destroyed. 
The knights of the order (who since 1309 had had their residence in 
Marienburg) conducted the government, the peasantry sunk into the 
condition of serfs. 

About the time of the first crusade, the Mohammedan prophet, 
Hassan, formed the fanatical sect of the Assassins, who dwelt in the 
ancient Parthia and the mountainous heights of Syria, and were 
remarkable for the entire renunciation of their own wills. They 
obeyed the commands of their chief, " the old man of the mountain," 
with the blindest devotion, executed with subtlety and courage every 
murderous deed that was entrusted to them, made a jest of the 
torture when seized, and were the terror of both Turks and 
Christians. 

§ 228. — 3. The crusades gave rise to a free peasantry, inasmuch, 
as by means of them many serfs attained then liberty, and raised and 
extended the power and importance of the burgher class and of the 
towns ; whilst a nearer acquaintance with foreign lands and foreign 
productions, gave an impulse to trade, developed commerce, and pro- 
duced prosperity. — 4. They increased the power and the authority of 
the clergy, multiplied the riches of the church (the clergy and the 
monasteries got possession of vast estates during the crusades, either 
by legacies and donations, or by purchase), and exalted the zeal for 
religion into a gloomy fanaticism. The latter quality was frightfully 
displayed in the persecution of the Waldenses and Albigenses, a reli- 
gious sect who were desirous of restoring the apostolical simplicity of 
the church and clergy. Provence and Languedoc in the South of 
Prance, where, under a beautiful and serene sky, a prosperous race of 
burghers had developed themselves with their free institutions, where 
the cheerful Provencal poetry of the troubadours had indulged its 



THE HOHENSTAUFENS. 151 

petulant and satirical humour at the expense of priests and bishops, 
was the residence of these Albigenses (so called from the city Alby) . 
Against these men and their protector, Bahnond VI. of 
Toulouse, Innocent III. ordered the cross to be preached 
by the Cistercian monks. Hereupon, bands of savage warriors, with 
some fanatical monks bearing the cross before them, marched into the 
blooming land, destroyed the rich cities, towns, and villages, slaugh- 
tered the innocent with the guilty, lighted up the flames of death, 
and filled the whole country with murder, plunder, and desolation. 
Bahnond for a long time resisted his enemies ; but when Louis VIII., 
excited by an ignoble cupidity for extending his possessions, under- 
took the war against the heretics, the count submitted himself, and 
concluded a peace by which he surrendered the greater part of his 
territories to Prance. But a desolating war of twenty years had 
destroyed the beautiful culture of the South of France, turned the 
land into a wilderness, and silenced for ever the cheerful song of 
the troubadour. A few years afterwards, the gallant peasant republic 
of the Stedingers was visited in a similar manner by a war of exter- 
mination, at the instance of the bishops of Bremen and Batsburgh. 

2. THE HOHENSTAUFENS (A.D. 1138 1154). 

§ 229. Upon the death of the emperor Lothaire (§ 216), on his 
return from Italy, his son-in-law, Henry the Proud, believed himself 
to possess the nearest claims to the throne. But the great power of 
the house of Welf, who held Bavaria and Saxony, and whose posses- 
sions extended from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, together with 
the arrogance of the haughty duke, induced many of the princes 
assembled at the imperial diet at Coblentz, to elect Conrad of Hohen- 
staufen. But Henry hesitated to recognise the election, and refused 
Conrad III. tne required homage. Upon this, Conrad pronounced the 
a.d. 1138— ban of the empire against him, and declared the forfeiture 
1152- of both his dukedoms. This occasioned a renewal of 

hostilities between the houses of Hohenstaufen and Welf, and a 
desolating civil war. It was at the siege of Weinsberg, an hereditary 
possession of the Welfs, that the war cries, "Hurrah for Welf!" 
" Hurrah for Waibling ! " which gave rise to the party names, Welfs 
and "Waibhngs (Italice, Guelfs and Grhibellines), were first heard. 
The citadel was obliged to surrender to the emperor, but the garrison 
was preserved by the wit and fidelity of the women. The war con- 
tinued till the death of Henry the Proud. It was only 
when his son Henry the Lion received back his paternal 
inheritance, and the two dukedoms of Bavaria and Saxony, that a 
complete reconciliation was, for a time, effected. 

Conrad was a brave and good man; but his war against the "Welfs, 
and the second crusade in which he engaged, prevented his being of 



152 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

any great service to Germany. A short time before his death, he 
exerted his influence with the princes to procure the election of his 
high-spirited and energetic nephew, Frederick Barbarossa (Red- 
beard), who was esteemed the flower of chivalry, and with whose 
qualities Conrad had made acquaintance during the crusade. This 

great emperor, Frederick I., gave peace and order to 
Barbarossa the empire within, and respect and security without. 
a.d. 1152 — The genius for government displayed by this powerful 

man, who combined severity with justice, awakened every 
where respect and obedience. 

§ 230. Frederick found the hardest conflict in Italy, to which 
country he made six expeditions. The Lombard towns, and the 
haughty Milan in particular, entertained the project of erecting their 
temtories into small republics. Inspired by patriotism and a love of 
freedom, they formed an effective burgher militia, and attempted to 
rid themselves of the imperial authority. This refractory spirit dis- 
played itself even during Frederick's first campaign, when, in accord- 
ance with a long-established custom, he held a review of his troops in 
the plains near Piacenza, and required the princes and cities of Upper 
Italy to do him homage. He coidd not indeed at this time coerce the 
powerful Milan, but he sought to terrify her by the destruction of 
some smaller towns, before he had himself invested with the Lombard 
crown in Pavia, and the imperial crown in Pome. He only obtained 
the latter by giving up Arnold of Brescia. This remarkable man 
wished to bring back the church to its apostolic simplicity. In 
furtherance of this project, he denounced the worldly possessions and 
the arrogance of the clergy, and affirmed that the temporal authority 
of the head of the church was an infringement on the Holy Scriptures. 
Inflamed by these discourses, the Romans renounced their obedience 
to the pope, and set up a republic in imitation of the ancient govern- 
ment. But when the bold preacher of this reformation was delivered 
up to the pope and burnt before the gates of the city, the courage of 
the Romans was subdued. They consented to the abolishing of the 
new institutions, and again submitted to the power of the pope. 

§ 231. After Frederick's departure, the Milanese persisted in their 
defiance, and destroyed several cities that adhered to the emperor 

(for example, Lodi). Upon this, Frederick undertook a 

second expedition, had his sovereign rights (regalia) de- 
termined by jurists according to the code of Justinian (§ 186), and 
when Milan refused to submit to the decision, uttered the ban 
against the refractory city. A fierce war was at length decided 
in favour of the emperor. Milan was obliged to surrender, after a 
siege of three years and a half. After the carriage (carroccio) that 
supported the chief banner of the city had been broken to pieces, 
and the citizens had humbled themselves before the conqueror, the 



THE HOHENSTAUFENS. 153 

walls and houses were levelled with the earth, and the inhabitants 
were compelled to settle themselves in four widely separated points of 
their territory. Terrified at this result, the remainder of the Lom- 
bard towns submitted themselves, and received the imperial legates 
(podesta) within then walls. A short time after, Frederick engaged 
in a violent quarrel with the obstinate pope, Alexander III. The 
angry priest fulminated an excommunication against the emperor, 
and united himself with the Lombard cities, which were exasperated 
with the tyranny of the imperial legate. Under the guidance of the 
pope, a confederation of Lombard cities was rapidly formed, which 
was joined by Milan, which had again recovered itself, and by almost 
all the city communities of Upper Italy. The confederation built the 
strong city of Alexandria, which was named after the pope, in 
defiance of the emperor, and defended itself with courage and success 
against all the attacks of Frederick ; so that the latter, having lost 
many of his soldiers by the summer fever, and being busied with the 
affairs of Germany, was obliged to leave Italy for a long time 
undisturbed. 

§ 232. At length Frederick again crossed the Alps with a vast 
army, but was detained so long by the siege of Alexandria, that 
he feared to lose all the fruits of his campaign, and resolved, against 
the advice of his friends, upon hazarding a battle. But Henry the 
Lion deserted the emperor in the hour of danger ; he refused his as- 
sistance, though Frederick implored it at his feet at the lake of 
Como ; and thus brought about the defeat of the Germans at the 
battle of Legnano, where the Milanese, united together for the 
defence of the car which bore the ensign (the legion of 

A.D. 1176. . O V t> 

death), performed prodigies of valour. The emperor him- 
self was missing for some days. But so great was the respect for 
Frederick's heroism, that the pope and Lombard confederation 
willingly accepted his proffer of peace. At a meeting in Yenice, a 
truce of six years, which proved the foundation of the peace of 
Constance, was arranged between the belligerent parties. Alexander 
was acknowledged as the lawful head of the church, Frederick was 
released from the anathema, and the confederate towns were required 
to do homage, and admit the emperor's rights as sovereign. Imperial 
legates were to fill the chief offices of justice, and the imperial troops 
were to be supported by the towns during their marches through 
them. Before Frederick quitted Italy, he married his eldest son, 
Henry, to Constantia, the heiress of the Norman kingdom in Naples 
and Sicily. 

§ 233. Henry the Lion was much alarmed when the news of 
Frederick's reconciliation with the pope became known in Germany. 
He had extended his rule over the Slavonic tribes in Pomerania and 
Mecklenburg; had made war npon the Frislanders on the Baltic, 



1 51 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

and the peasant republic of the Ditmarsens, in Holstein ; and had 
got possession of a large kingdom. He had established mines in the 
Harz mountains ; he had founded cities and bishopricks (Lubeck, 
Munich, Ratzeburg), and attracted settlers from the Netherlands. 
But his ambition and acts of violence against princes and clergy, were 
not less known than his great feats in war, so that the brazen lion 
that he erected before the citadel of his chief city, Brunswick, might 
be regarded as an emblem of his rapacity, as well as of his strength. 
The complaints, accordingly, that arose on all sides against Henry, 
upon the emperor's return, gave the latter the opportunity he so 
much wished for, of summoning him before the supreme court of the 
empire ; and upou his neglect of the repeated summons, of pro- 
nouncing against him the ban of the empire, and de- 
priving him of his two dukedoms, Bavaria and Saxony. 
The former devolved to the Wittelsbachs, who were devoted to the 
Hohenstaufens, and who afterwards received the palatinate of the 
Rhine; and Saxony was shared between Bernhard of Anhalt, son of 
Albert the Bear, and the neighbouring bishops and princes. But the 
Lion could only be subdued after a destructive war. For two years 
he withstood all his enemies. It was not until Frederick himself 
took the field against him, that he humbled himself before his great 
adversary, prostrated himself at his feet at Erfurt, and retired into 
three years' banishment in England. He nevertheless retained for 
himself and family his hereditary possessions of Brunswick and 
Luneburg. After Frederick had subdued all his enemies, he under- 
took the third crusade, that he might finish his heroic course in the 
same manner that he had commenced it. From this expedition he 
never returned ; he found his death in the distant East. But he hives 
still in the legends of his people, in which the restoration of the ancient 
strength and greatness of the G-erman empire is connected with his 
return. 

Henr VI § ^34. Frederick's son, Henry VI., was an avaricious 

a.d. 1190— and cruel prince, who resided more in Italy than in Ger- 
1197- many. After the death of the last Norman king, he 

wished to take possession of Naples and Sicily, the inheritance of 
his wife, Constantia. But the nobility, who were afraid of Henry's 
ambition and avarice, opposed this project, and attempted to place 
one of the native nobles, the brave Tancred, on the throne. It 
was not until Henry had ecpiipped fresh armaments with the 
ransom of the English king (§ 223), that he succeeded, with the 
assistance of the crusaders of Northern Germany and Thuringia, 
whom he enticed by a promise of a free passage to Lower Italy, in 
subduing his enemies, and in getting possession of Naples and 
Palermo. The revenge of the angry ruler was frightful. The prisons 
were filled with nobles and bishops, some of whom were deprived of 



THE HOHENSTAUFENS. 155 

their eyes and empaled, while others were burnt, or buried alive in 
the earth. The plunder was conveyed hy heavily-laden pack-horses 
to the Hohenstaufen castles. Henry died suddenly a few years 
afterwards, at the age of thirty-two, leaving behind hhn a son of two 
years of age, who was entrusted to the guardianship of the highly- 
accomplished pope, Innocent III. The adherents of the Hohenstau- 
fens elected Philip of Swabia, brother of Henry VI., to be emperor, 
whilst the Welf faction proclaimed Otto IV., second son of Henry 
the Lion : the former was acknowledged in the south, the latter in 
the north. The consequence of this division was a ten years' war, 
during which the greatest lawlessness and violence prevailed, and 
such devastations were committed, that sixteen cathedrals and 350 
parishes with churches were burnt to the ground. Even after 
Philip had been murdered at Bamberg, from motives of private 
revenge, by the hasty Palgrave, Otto of Wittelsbach, peace 
did not return for any length of time. For now a quarrel 
broke out between the emperor Otto IV. and pope Innocent III. 

§ 235. Innocent III., a politic prince, endowed with unusual 
talents for government, gave the papacy its highest power by estab- 
lishing the principle, that the church was superior to the state, and 
its spiritual head superior to any temporal ruler ; so that all the 
princes of the world were bound to consider the pope as their liege 
lord and arbiter. He at the same time laid the foundation of an 
ecclesiastical state, by getting all previous donations confirmed by 
Otto, and inducing him to renounce all the imperial feudal rights 
over Eome and the central provinces of Italy. But when the em- 
peror at length attempted to set some limits to the am- 
bition of the pontiff, the latter excommunicated him, and 
sent the young Frederick into Germany, to stir up afresh the war 
between the Gruelfs and the Ghibellines. The Ghibelline party 
gladly united themselves to the handsome and promising youth, so 
that Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen was universally ac- 
knowledged emperor, even before Otto IV.'s death. 
Otto IV. died at Brunswick in the year 1218. But a powerful 
Frederick II °PP onen t °f the head of the church arose in the free- 
a.d. 1218— ' thinking Frederick II, who had been educated in the 
125 °- wisdom of the Arabians, and who entertained a favourable 

feeling towards the professors of Islam, and the Oriental mode of life ; 
so that his reign presents a continual contest between the imperial 
power and the papacy. Frederick's position, as king of Upper and 
Lower Italy, threatened no less danger to the temporal power of the 
pope, than his sceptical turn of mind to the authority of the church. 
It was for this reason, that Innocent and his successors laboured to 
separate the government of Naples and Sicily from the imperial office. 
§ 236. As Frederick for a long time refused to undertake the 



156 TIIE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

promised crusade (§ 225), he was first excommunicated by Gregory 
IX., and when he proceeded to the Holy Land in the following year, 
without being released from the curse, the pope became more angry 
than ever, and not only paralyzed all the emperor's undertakings in 
Palestine, but commanded his territories in Lower Italy to be at- 
tacked by soldiers, who were distinguished by the badge of the keys 
of St. Peter. This hastened Frederick's return. He repulsed the 
papist troops, and approached the frontiers of the ecclesiastical terri- 
tories, upon which Gregory consented to a peace, and the removal of 
the excommunication. After this, Frederick devoted his whole 
attention to the internal well-being of his kingdom. He restrained 
the increasing feuds and depredations of the knights in Germany; he 
gave the inhabitants of Lower Italy a new code of laws ; he encou- 
raged trade, industry, and poetry. But when he attempted to compel 
the inhabitants of the Lombard towns to fulfil the conditions of the 
peace of Constance (§ 232), and to discharge the regalian rights that 
pei'tained to him as emperor, a furious war broke out. Frederick, in 
conjunction with the Ghibellmes, under the inhuman tyrant Ezzebno, 
in Verona, and supported by his trusty Saracens, whom he had 
settled in Lower Italy, overcame the united army of the Lombards, 
and reduced most of the towns to submission. But when he pursued 
his conquest with severity, threatened the Milanese with a fate 
similar to that which they had experienced from Frederick Barbarossa 
(§ 231), and presented his natural son, the brave and handsome 
Enzio, Avith the kingdom of Sardinia, the aged prince of the church 
again renewed his excommunication, joined the Lombards, and 
attempted to raise up enemies on every side against the emperor, 
whom he accused of infidelity and contempt for religion. Frederick 
retorted these accusations in some violent written replies, and repaid 
invective with invective, but the church carried off the victory. 

§ 237. When Gregory IX. at the age of nearly a 
hundred years, at length sunk into the grave, Frederick's 
position seemed to become more favourable. But the pope's suc- 
cessor, the resolute Innocent IV., trod the same path. For the pur- 
pose of being free from restraint, he left Italy, and called a solemn 
council of the church, at Lyons. Without listening to Frederick's 
defence, Innocent here renewed the sentence of excommunication 
against the emperor in the severest form. He denounced him as a 
blasphemer of God, a secret Mohammedan, and an enemy of the 
church ; declared him to have forfeited his kingdom, released all his 
subjects from their oath of allegiance, and threatened his adherents 
with the ban of the church. Upon this, the war broke out afresh in 
every country. The popish party succeeded in Germany in carrying 
the election of a rival emperor, Henry liaspe, of Thuringia, 
and when, after the unfortunate engagement at Ulm, 



THE HOHENSTAUFENS. 157 

against Frederick's son, Conrad, Henry died powerless and forsaken 
in the castle of Wartburg, the young count, "William of Holland, 
allowed himself to be persuaded to assume the title of emperor. But 
the imperial towns and most of the secular princes sided with 
Conrad. 

§ 238. In the mean time, the war between G-uelfs and GThibellines 
raged furiously in Italy. The fiery temperament of the revengeful 
southerns occasioned deeds of unheard-of atrocity : family was arrayed 
against family, city against city ; neither age nor condition refrained 
from the combat. Ezzelino, the leader of the Ghibelline nobility, 
perpetrated the most monstrous cruelties in his attacks upon the 
Guelf cities, till at length he met with the punishment he deserved 
in the prison of Milan. 

Frederick for a long time maintained his lofty attitude ; the num- 
ber of his foes only increased his courage. But when his son, Enzio, 
fell into the hands of the Bolognese, who kept the fair-haired king for 
twenty years in confinement ; when his chancellor, Peter of Vinea, 
suffered himself to be gained by the opposite party, and then either 
from fear or remorse deprived himself of life in prison, — his heart at 
length broke. He died in his fifty-sixth year, in the arms of his best 
beloved son, Manfred, in Lower Italy. Frederick II. united great 
cultivation of mind and aptitude for science and poety, with courage, 
heroism, and beauty of person. Surrounded by pomp, luxury, and 
pleasures of all descriptions, he had every pretension to happiness, 
had not his sceptical spirit resisted the church, and had he only 
learnt to moderate his desires and bridle his passions. 

§ 239. Upon the news of Frederick's death, Innocent IV. returned 
in triumph to Borne. He declared Naples and Sicily to be lapsed 
fiefs of the chair of St. Peter, and excommunicated Conrad IV. and 
Manfred, who wished to take possession of their paternal inheritance. 
Conrad soon sunk into an early grave ; but his chivalrous half-brother, 
Manfred, defended Lower Italy with his German and Saracen troops 
with such courage and success, that the greater part of the towns 
tendered their allegiance, and the Guelfic troops were obliged to 
retreat into the ecclesiastical states. Distress at this hastened the 
death of Innocent IV. His successor, Urban IV., pursued however 
the same path. Determined to deprive the Hohenstaufens of Naples 
and Sicily at any price, he offered this beautiful kingdom, as a papal 
fief, to the energetic but despotic Charles of Anjou, brother of the 
French king, Louis IX., under condition that he should conquer it 
by G-uelfic assistance and with French troops, and should pay a 
yearly tribute to the Boman court. Manfred valiantly resisted his 
insolent rival. But when the battle of Beneventum was 
a.d. 1260. deeded against him by Italian treachery, he plunged 
into the thickest of the enemy and died the death of a hero. A 



158 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

simple grave, to which, every soldier contributed a stone, inclosed his 
remains. 

§ 210. After the battle of Beneventum, the power of the Ghibel- 
lines was broken ; Naples and Sicily fell into the hands of the stern 
victor, who made the unfortunate land feel all the miseries of con- 
quest. The adherents of the Hohenstaufens were punished with 
death, imprisonment, and banishment ; then possessions were divided 
among the French and Guelfic soldiers. Upon this, the oppressed 
people called Conrad IV. 's youngest son, Conradine, from Germany 
into Italy. Conradine, in whose bosom dwelt the lofty spirit and 
heroic courage of his ancestors, left his home for the purpose of again 
conquering the inheritance of the Hohenstaufens, with the assistance 
of his youthful friend, Frederick of Baden, and a few faithful adhe- 
rents. Received with rejoicing by the Ghibellines, he marched vic- 
toriously through Upper and Middle Italy, put the pope to flight, 
and crossed the frontiers of Naples. The battle at Scurcola ter- 
minated in his favour ; but his over-hasty advance threw the victory 
into the hands of the enemy, who were watching in ambuscade. His 
troops were either killed or dispersed ; he himself, betrayed into the 
hands of his rival, Charles of Anjou, was beheaded at 
Naples, along with his bosom friend, Frederick. Thus 
sank the last scion of a glorious race of heroes, robbed of his honour, 
into an early grave. 

The still remaining members of the house of Hohenstaufen also 
experienced a cruel fate. King Enzio died in prison in Bologna 
(§ 236). The ruthless Charles allowed the sons of Manfred to pine 
in prison till they died ; and Margaret, the daughter of Frederick II., 
was ill-treated and threatened with death by her husband, Albert of 
Thuringia, called the Uncourteous, so that she fled by night from the 
castle of Wartburg. In her agony at her separation from her two 
sons, she bit one of them in the cheek whilst embracing him, so that 
he retained the mark and the surname of "the Bitten." 

After Conradine's death, Charles proceeded with cruelty and severity 
against all his adherents. Upon this, John of Procida, a Ghibelline, 
who had been deprived of his property, swore vengeance against the 
tyrant. By his influence, all the French were killed by the Sici- 
lians, on the so-called Sicilian vespers, and the island was 
given up to Manfred's valiant son-in-law, Peter of Ara- 
gon, by whose assistance, the inhabitants successfully repelled all the 
attacks of Charles, and established an independent kingdom. Peter's 
second son, Frederick, was the first king of Sicily. 

3. GENEKAL VIEW OE THE MIDDLE AGES. 

§ 241. The relations which obtained during the middle ages origi- 
nated from a mingling together of Roman and Germanic institutions, 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 159 

and were based upon the greater or less amount of personal freedom 
or the want of it. These intricate relations are included 
under the general term of " feudal system." After the 
conquest of the depopulated Roman provinces, the land was generally- 
divided into three portions : the king took one ; another he divided 
among his companions in the war, as their free property (allodium), 
under the condition of military service ; the third was left to the original 
inhabitants, upon the payment of a tax. "But for the purpose of 
binding the freemen more closely to the throne, the king granted por- 
tions of his own lands to a part of them for life. This was called a fief ; 
the giver was the liege-lord, the receiver was called liege-man, or vassal. 
In the same way, rich freemen enfeoffed those who were less wealthy 
with portions of their estates, and even of their fiefs (sub-infeudation), 
and thus obtained liegemen or vassals of their own. Bishops and 
abbots also gave fiefs to knights, subject to the condition of defending 
the convent and supplying the required contingent of troops to the 
arriere-ban. These relations, founded upon mutual good faith, con- 
stituted a chain that bound the men of the middle ages in a variety 
of ways, and proved a grievous hindrance to the freedom of person 
and property. The vassals of the crown or empire gradually obtained 
possession of their fiefs as hereditary estates, and by this means 
became so powerful, that they opposed the king as his equal; the 
rich proprietors deprived the less wealthy of their lands, so that in 
their capacity of free landlords (barons), they belonged to the class of 
nobles, whilst the free holders of small estates were degraded to the 
condition of dependents, and cultivated their former possessions as 
hereditary tenants. The number of serfs, who were looked upon as 
belonging to the land, and surrendered as slaves without rights to the 
arbitrary will of their masters, was still very great. All who were in 
the position of dependents or serfs, were under certain obligations to 
the landowner, in the shape either of tithes or rent on their produce 
of fruit, wine, or cattle, or of contributions of money upon stated 
occasions, or of unpaid labour (socage duties). These taxes and 
duties, under the name of "feudal burdens," became more numerous 
and oppressive with time. 

§ 242. Men were divided in the middle ages, according to their 
callings, into three classes, warriors, teachers, and producers : — 

1. The warrior class embraced the nobility and the knights with 
their vassals and followers. The rank of knight depended upon being 
descended from a knightly family, and the knightly education as page 
or squire, during which, the spurs were to be earned by some feat of 
arms, before the candidate could be received into the fellowship by 
the accolade. The great end of knighthood was war, sometimes for 
the purpose of displaying strength or acquiring honour ; sometimes to 
defend religion and its ministers, the church and the clergy ; and 



160 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

sometimes to protect women, as the weaker sex. That respect for 
women which is the peculiar distinction of the German character, 
produced the devotion to the fair sex and the services of gallantry 
which were the soid of the chivalry and poetry of the middle ages. 
Knightly games or tournaments, in which the prize was presented to 
the victor by a maiden of noble condition, served to preserve and 
invigorate the spirit of chivalry ; and that no unqualified person might 
surreptitiously introduce himself under cover of his armour, coats of 
arms were introduced as symbols of names and families. 

§ 24-3. — 2. The teacher class included the whole of the clergy ; 
not only the manifold grades of the priesthood, but also the monks. 
In exclusive possession of the learning of the time, and invested with 
the power of deciding the salvation of men's souls, the clergy acquired 
vast authority over the ignorant and superstitious people of the 
middle ages. The head of the church, the pope, assumed 
the command over all temporal princes and kingdoms, 
and regarded the imperial crown as his fief; the superior clergy, 
besides their ecclesiastical dignities, were frequently in possession of 
the most influential offices of the state, and the greater number of 
the archbishoprics, bishoprics, and abbacies, gradually acquired great 
possessions, so as to be raised to an equality with principalities. 
Magnificent cathedrals, adorned with all the productions of art, gave 
evidence of the greatness of the episcopal residences. A luxurious 
life in splendidly ornamented houses seemed the chief privilege of the 
superior clergy. The episcopal power, which at first was very con- 
siderable, was jDerpetually curtailed by the Roman Consistory. The 
investiture of bishops, which had originally been in the hands of the 
prince, was gradually claimed as the exclusive privilege of the Eoman 
court ; the spiritual jurisdiction of the rural bishops was more and 
more abridged, whilst the papal court of judicature in Rome decided 
all important questions before its own tribunal, and withdrew many 
cloisters and abbeys from the episcopal authority, and placed them 
under its own immediate jurisdiction. Vast sums were obliged to be paid 
for all appointments, decisions, and dispensations, by Avhich means 
much money poured into Rome. For the purpose of keeping 
a watchful eye upon the affairs of the whole church, and managing 
every thing from Rome, papal legates were constantly traversing the 
different kingdoms. By these means, the papal power became un- 
limited, and the higher it rose, the less did any one dare to raise his 
voice against it. Every opposer of the existing ecclesiastical institu- 
tions was regarded as an enemy of the church, and the audacious 
offenders were threatened with the most fearful punishments of the 
church in their triple gradation, — excommunication, which affected 
only the individual ; the interdict, which was pronounced over whole 
countries, and forbade the exercise of every religious and ecclesiastical 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 161 

function ; and a crusade (kreuzzug) with the inquisition, by which 
whole provinces were given up to utter destruction. This power of 
the papacy was especially promoted, first, by the spurious Isidorian 
decretals, a collection of ecclesiastical laws and decisions, which, pro- 
fessedly belonging to the first four centuries, were in reality most of 
them produced in the ninth, and which give the whole legislative and 
judiciary authority of the Church to the pope ; secondly, by the rapid 
increase of the monks, of the ecclesiastical orders, and of convents ; 
thirdly, by the learned men of the middle ages, called schoolmen. 

§ 244. Monachism took its rise in the East, where a solitary and 
contemplative life devoted to the consideration of divine subjects, 
had always been considered more meritorious than active 
exertion. This calling was gradually adopted by so 
many, that at the end of the third century, the Egyptian Antonius, 
who had cast away his vast possessions and chosen the desert for his 
residence, collected together the hitherto dispersed anchorites (mo- 
nachi) into fenced places (monasteria, coenobia, claustra, cloisters), 
that they might live together in fellowship ; and his disciple, Pacho- 
mius, gave the brotherhood a ride. Monachism soon extended to 
the "West. In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia established the 
first monastry on Mount Casino, in Lower Italy, and became by this 
means the founder of the widely-spread order of Benedictines, which 
rapidly extended itself among all nations, and built many convents. 
These monasteries, erected for the most part in beautiful and remote 
situations, and the inhabitants of which were obliged to take the 
three vows of chastity (celibacy), personal poverty, and obedience, 
proved, in those days of lawlessness and barbarism, a blessing to 
mankind. They converted heaths and forests into flourishing farms ; 
they afforded a place of refuge (asylum) to .the persecuted and 
oppressed ; they ennobled the rude minds of men by the preaching of 
the Gospel ; they planted the seeds of morality and civilization in the 
bosoms of the young by their schools for education ; and they pre- 
served the remains of ancient literature and philosophy from utter 
destruction. Many of the Benedictine monasteries were the nurseries 
of education, the arts, and the sciences, as St. Gallen, Fulda, Reiche- 
nau, and Corvey (in Westphalia), and many others. When the 
Benedicthie orders grew relaxed, the monastery of Clugny, in Bur- 
gundy, separated itself from them in the tenth century, and intro- 
duced a more rigid discipline. In the twelfth century the monks of 
Clugny numbered upwards of 2000 cloisters. But this order also 
soon proved insufficient to satisfy the strong demands of the middle 
age against the allurements of sin and the seductions of the flesh ; so 
that at the end of the eleventh century the Cistercians, and a few 
decades later, the order of Premonstrants sprang up ; the former in 
Burgundy (Citeaux), the latter in a woody country near Laon (Pre- 

M 



1G2 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

montre). The order of Carthusians, founded about the year 1084, 
which commenced with a cloister of anchorites (Carthusia, Chartreuse) 
in a rugged valley near Grrenoble, was the most austere in its practice. 
A life of solitude and silence in a cell, a spare and meagre diet, a 
penitential garment of hair, flagellations, and the rigid practice of 
devotional exercises, were duties imposed upon every member of this 
fraternity. 

§ 245. The establishment of the so-called mendicant orders, in the 
Franciscans thirteenth century, was remarkably productive of results, 
and Domini- Francis of Assisi (a.d. 1226), the son of a rich merchant, 
renounced all his possessions, clothed himself in rags, and 
wandered through the world begging and preaching repentance. His 
fiery zeal procured him disciples who, like himself, renounced their 
worldly possessions, fasted, prayed, tore their backs with scourges, 
and supplied their slender wants from voluntary alms and donations. 
The order of Franciscans or Minorites, founded by him, spread them- 
selves rapidly through all countries. Contemporaneously with the 
Franciscans, who in process of time divided into numerous branches, 
arose the order of Dominicans or preaching monks, founded by an 
illustrious and learned Spaniard, Dominicus, and whose dearest 
objects were the maintenance of the predominant faith in its purity, 
and the extinction of heretical opinions. The conversion of the Albi- 
genses (§ 228), among whom their founder had resided for a con- 
siderable time, was the first attempt of the order, the members of 
which took a vow of entire poverty, and endeavoured to win heaven 
by austerity and the practice of a rigid devotion. It was for these 
reasons that the court of inquisition, with its frightful examinations, 
dungeons, and tortures, was committed to them. The mendicant 
orders were the most powerful support of the pope, by whom they 
were consequently endowed with the greatest privileges, and with- 
drawn from the jurisdiction of the bishops. The Franciscans pos- 
sessed the hearts of the people, with whose joys and sorrows they 
sympathized, and were principally occupied in the cure of souls : the 
Dominicans devoted themselves to the sciences, gradually filled the 
chairs of the universities, and numbered mauy of the greatest teachers 
of the Church among their members. 

§ 246. — 3. To the productive class belonged the inhabitants of the 
towns and country who were engaged in the occupations of peace. 
The peasantry, who were for the most part in a condition of serfdom, 
and took no share in public life, were at first exclusively understood by 
this title. But when the number of the towns was increased by the 
efforts of the emperors of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen lines, aud many 
of the inhabitants of the country settled in them, the third class divided 
itself into citizens and peasants, and obtained various privileges and 
liberties. These towns were distinguished as imperial towns, which 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGE. \Q% 

were under the immediate control of the emperor, and represented in 
the imperial diet ; — and provincial towns, which belonged to the terri- 
tory of a prince. The former were the most ancient as well as the 
richest and most powerful, and it was in them that the town policy 
of the middle ages was developed. The inhabitants originally con- 
sisted, as in ancient Rome, of free patrician families, and a tributary 
and dependent class employed in trade and agriculture, who as 
tenants and inferior burghers, possessed no share in the privileges of 
the citizens. It was from the former that the mayor (scoff enrath) 
was chosen. After a time, the inferior burghers succeeded in gaining 
the ascendancy over the patrician families. With this object, the 
artificers formed themselves into guilds and corporations, by which 
means a public spirit was awakened, and the inferior class of citizens 
rendered more powerful. These guilds, whose strength consisted in 
the stout arms of their members, soon attained such power, that they 
not only every where obtained the rights of citizenship, and a share 
in the government of the city, but in very many towns the rule of 
the patricians was thrust aside by the power of the guilds. The 
guilds marched into the field with their own banners, under the con- 
duct of the guild-master, and defended their liberties without, as they 
had known how to gain and maintain them within. 

§ 247. The literature of the middle ages was of a threefold 
character : — 

1. Writings on religion and the Church ; the most important of 
which were composed by the schoolmen and the mystics. 
By schoolmen, are to be understood those philosophical 
writers who made the doctrines and dogmas of the Church the objects 
of their speculation and inquiry. In doing this, they employed the 
rules of the Aristotelian dialectics, and invented a number of formu- 
laries and scholastic terms (terminologies), and descended at length 
to trifling subtleties and frivolous definitions and demonstrations. 
The schoolmen produced works in which we hardly know whether 
most to admire the acuteness displayed in the divisions of the 
subject, and in the development and connexion of the conclusions, 
or the diligence, the learning, and the wonderful power of applica- 
tion. In the thirteenth century, scholasticism attained its highest 
perfection in the persons of the Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, and the 
Franciscan, Duns Scotus ; so that from this period, the scholastics 
were all divided into Thomists and Scotists. Men of warm feelings 
and sensitive natures were not content with the dry logic of these 
schoolmen, they opposed therefore a religion of feeling, of poetry, and 
of imagination, to their Christianity built upon philosophical rules 
and forms of reasoning. This was first done by St. Bernhard of 
Clairvaux (§ 222), and by the noble Bonaventura (a.d. 1274) ; but in 
the most comprehensive way by the mystics. These latter imitated 

M 2 



164 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

the necessitous life of Christ, and sought to overcome the wickedness 
of the world by the castigation of the body and the mortification of 
the fleshly appetites, and strove to effect a spiritual union 
between themselves and God. Mysticism has had a 
powerful influence both upon life and literature ; and although the 
inculcation of meekness and self-humiliation paralyzed active exertion, 
and a life devoted to the emotions and sentiments occasionally pro- 
duced fanaticism, yet its influence upon a race which was sunk in 
barbarism and stupidity was, on the whole, beneficial. The " Imita- 
tion of the Life of Christ" of the Dominican monk, John Tauler of 
Strasburg, and the "Book of Everlasting Wisdorn," of Henry Suso 
of Constance, were held in great esteem. The Brethren of the Com- 
mon Life, to whom belonged Thomas a, Kempis (a.d. 1471), the 
writer of the widely circulated devotional work, called the "Imitation 
of Christ," which has been translated into all languages, were the 
most active among the mystics. 

§ 218. — 2. Not only theological and philosophical studies were, 
and remained in the hands of the clergy, but also mathematical and 
natural science and the writing of history. The Greeks and Arabians 
exercised the greatest influence in extending and perfecting the 
material sciences. It was from the Arabian schools that the western 
clergy drew the greatest part of their admired wisdom. Albertus 
Magnus, a widely travelled and much esteemed teacher, possessed 
such a knowledge of physics, chemistry, and similar subjects, that he 
was generally regarded as a sorcerer. Among the composers of Latin 
chronicles and annals, William of Tyrus, the historian of the crusades 
and the Holy Land, took the first place in France ; and Otto of 
Freisingen, the half-brother of the emperor Conrad III., in Germany. 
By the side of these learned historical compositions, there were 
already, at the time of the crusades, in Italy, France, and Spain, his- 
torical descriptions of particular periods and events, in the vernacular 
tongues, which, although less trustworthy than the former, are more 
interesting to read, and of more importance to the history of civiliza- 
tion. Among these may be mentioned the History of the Fourth 
Crusade, by Villehardouin (§ 224), Joinville's History and Chronicle 
of St. Louis ; and, before all, Froissart's History and Clnonicle of his 
own Times (a.d. 1329—1400). 

§ 249. — 3. Whilst learned literature was cultivated by the priests 
exclusively, the art of poetry passed at an early period into the 
hands of the knights, chiefly because love (minne), and devotion 
to the ladies, feelings, to which the clergy, on account of their con- 
dition, dared not devote themselves, were the soid and essence of the 
latter. The poetry of the middle ages was alike, both as to its form 
and subject-matter, in all the nations of Europe. This was partly 
occasioned by the great intercourse that took place among people 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 165 

during the crusades, which facilitated the interchange of legends and 
poems, and partly by the great diffusion and general intelligibility of 
the Romance language. In Erance, Italy, Spain, and to a certain ex- 
tent in England, languages were then spoken which bore a strong 
resemblance to each other, so that the literary productions of one 
country could be understood without difficulty in the rest. The 
middle-age poetry was divided into three kinds, according to the sub- 
ject; — Heroic poems and heroic ballads (Epopee, Romance), where 
the deeds of knights, battles, adventures, and love affairs — the indis- 
pensable element of romantic poetry — formed the materials ; sonnets, 
in which the poet expressed his feelings, emotions, or thoughts, 
in melodious verses ; and religious poetry, in which the outpourings 
of devotion and religious enthusiasm, the praises of God and the 
Virgin, or the pious actions and histories of the saints, formed the 
subject. The epic poems dealt with certain cycles of legends, partly 
derived from the ancient world, as the Alexandriad of the priest 
Lamprecht, and partly from the Christian period, as the romance of 
Charlemagne and his Paladins (for example the lay of Roland, by 
the priest Conrad), and the British king Arthur and his round table, 
with which the "Welsh legend of the Grale was afterwards connected. 
To the latter cycle of romance belong the two greatest epics of the 
middle age, the Percival of "Wolfram of Eschenbach (a.d. 1200), and 
the Tristran and Isolde of Gottfried of Strasburg. But the glory 
of German heroic poetry is the Niebelungenlied, the materials of which 
are derived from the migrations of nations. The lyric poets, that in 
Germany were called " minnesanger," and in Erance "troubadours," 
made the tender emotions of the heart or the feelings of love the sub- 
ject of their poems, or they lashed depravity of morals and the cor- 
ruptions of the clergy in satirical compositions called Sirventes. In 
Germany, the most celebrated of the minnesangers was "Walter 
Vogelweide, who lived at the court of Hermann of Thuringia. At 
that time, the castle of Wartburg, near Eisenach, in Thuringia, was 
the place of assembly for the greatest and most renowned sangers. 
But Italy could display the greatest poet of the middle ages. After 
the stern Ghibelline, Dante of Elorence (a.d. 1321) had moulded 
the poetical language of Italy in his great epic poem, " The Divine 
Comody," Petrarch (a.d. 1374) brought it to the highest perfection 
of harmony in his Odes to Laura, whilst his contemporary, Boccaccio, 
became the creator of Italian prose by his tales and novels (Decame- 
ron). Dante's sublime poem, which consists of three parts, Hell, 
Purgatory, and Paradise, contains the whole wisdom of the middle 
ages, the whole treasure of the then acquired science, so that it was 
said with truth, that heaven and earth had each pat a hand to 
Dante's poem. Petrarch's other works are written in Latin. He, 



166 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

as 'well as Boccaccio, were mainly instrumental in the restoration of 
the ancient literature and civilization. 



V. DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. 
1. THE INTERREGNUM (1250—1273). 

§ 250. The period after the death of [Frederick II. was a momen- 
tous one for Germany. The imperial title was borne by foreign 
princes without power or influence, whilst at home a state of disorder 
and lawlessness prevailed, in which the strong alone could obtain 
justice. After Wdliam of Holland (§ 237) had faUen in battle 
against the brave Frislanders, the archbishop of Cologne turned the 
election to the wealthy Richard of Cornwall, brother of the English 
king, whilst the archbishop of Treves and his party adorned 
Alfonso X. the "Wise of Castile with the title of emperor. The 
former sailed repeatedly up the Rhine laden with treasures, to 
satisfy the avarice of the princes who had elected him ; the latter 
never visited the kingdom to the government of which he had 
been invited. The princes and bishops employed this interregnum in 
enlarging their territories, and possessing themselves of privileges, 
whilst the knights and vassals abused their strength by waylaying 
and plundering. They led a wild and predatory life in their castles, 
which, as the ruins yet show, were budt upon the banks of navigable 
streams or near frequented highways ; dragged travellers into their 
dungeons for the purpose of extorting a heavy ransom ; plundered the 
wagons of the mercantile towns, and bade defiance, from behind their 
strong walls to the powerless laws and tribunals. Attempts were 
made to remedy this state of things, 1. By the secret proceedings 
of the Eehmgericht (secret tribunal), established by the archbishop 
of Cologne in Westphalia (Dortmund) ; 2. By confederations of 
numerous towns for the purpose of mutual defence. The most im- 
portant of these confederations were the Hanseatic, in Northern 
Germany, which included Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, Wismar, 
Rostock, Stralsund, Riga, and many other trading cities ; and the 
confederation of the Rhine, which embraced the towns of Worms, 
Mayence, Spire, Strasburg, Basle, and numerous others. 

2. ORIGIN OE THE POWER OF THE HOUSE OE HAPSBURG AND OE 
THE HELVETIC CONEEDERATION. 

§ 251. During the interregnum, many of the princes and bishops 
had assumed the rights of sovereignty. To avoid losing what had 
been obtained, the princes to whom the right of election then chiefly 
belonged, and who were in consequence called electors, sought to 
prevent the elevation of any prince whose lands and vassals rendered 



DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. 167 

him formidable. At the same time, they required an energetic man 

who should be able to restrain the prevailing lawlessness, and to 

break the threatening power of Ottocar, king of Bohemia, Moravia, 

■r j 1f f an d Austria. All these qualities were possessed by Count 

Hapsburg, Rudolf of Hapsburg, who was elected emperor by the 

a.d. 1273 — influence of the archbishop of Mavence, with whom he 
1293 . . 

was then on friendly terms. His moderate hereditary 

estates in Alsatia, occasioned no alarm to the princes ; his courage, 
strength, and skill, had been long proved and acknowledged ; and 
what contributed especially to his election was his piety, and the in- 
clination he had always displayed to the church and clergy. When 
therefore Rudolf had assured to the pope and the GTerman princes 
the continuance of the privdeges and territories that they had either 
usurped or acquired by violence, his election was generally recog- 
nized, and Alfonso of Castde was induced to abdicate. Ottocar 
alone refused to do homage, and faded to appear at the appointed 
diet. Upon this, Rudolf declared war against him, marched into the 
enemy's territories with the aid of his Switzers and Alsatians, and 
that of the German princes whom he had connected to his house by 
marriages with his numerous daughters, and won the 
glorious victory on the Marchfeld. Ottocar was killed 
in the fight ; nothing but Bohemia and Moravia was left to his son 
Wenceslaus ; the remaining countries of Austria, Stiria, and Carniola, 
Rudolf settled on his sons, and by this means became the founder 
of the Austrian house of Hapsburg. 

§ 252. As Rudolf of Hapsburg avoided all interference in the 
affairs of Italy, he was able to turn his undivided energies to Ger- 
many. He succeeded, after a succession of campaigns and battles, 
chiefly in Swabia, against the rapacious Eberhard of Wirteinberg, 
and in Burgundy, in regaining many of the fiefs, lands, privdeges, and 
revenues, that had been alienated from the empire. But his greatest 
service was his securing the peace of the country and restoring law 
and order. He traversed the whole empire, and caUed the robber 
nobdity to a severe reckoning. In Thuringia alone he had twenty- 
nine knights executed, and destroyed sixty castles, and reduced in a 
single year upwards of seventy fortresses in Franconia and on the 
Rhine. He died at an advanged age, at Oomersheim, during one of 
these expeditions, and was buried at Spire. His simplicity, virtue, 
and honesty, gained him no less respect than his intelligence, his im- 
partial justice, and his warlike achievements. He was only wanting 
in the poetical magnanimity of the house of Hohenstaufen. 

§ 253, The princes, partly out of fear of the power of the Haps- 
burgers, and partly from dislike to Rudolf's cruel and avaricious son 
Albert, were induced, at the instigation of the archbishop of May- 



](3S THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

Adolf of ence, to elect Count Adolf of Nassau. But he, like 

Nassau, a.d. Rudolf, attempted to enlarge his own small territories, 
1291 1298. an( j mac "[ e use f Djq i oan ^ e ^ad rec eived from the king 
of England to assist him in raising German troops, in purchasing 
Thuringia and Misnia from Albert the Uncourteous (§ 240). This 
disgraceful transaction involved him in a war with Albert's son Fre- 
derick " with the bitten cheek," and Diezman, whom their degenerate 
father had attempted to deprive of their patrimony. The public dis- 
gust at this dishonest proceeding, and the discontent of the electoral 
princes of the Ehine (the Palatinate, Mayence, Treves, and Cologne), 
whom the emperor had deprived of the unjustly acquired tolls 
of the river, had aided in forming a party favourable to his opponent 
Albert. Albert procured the deposition of Adolf and his own election ; 
he then marched with his army upon the Ehine, and was victorious in 
ad 1^98 ^ e Da ^^ e a ^ Collheim near the Donnersberg. Adolf, 
hurled from his horse by the lance of his rival, found his 
Albert of death in the tumult. His body rests in the cathedral of 
Austria, a.d. Spire. Albert of Austria was an energetic but severe 
1298—1308. manj w ;h 0S e inflexible disposition might be read in his 
gloomy and one-eyed visage. He was ambitious, and desirous of en- 
larging his territories ; and he therefore not only prosecuted the war 
against Thuringia, but attempted to gain other lands besides. 
Eeared and hated, Albert was at length murdered at AVmdisch on the 
Eeuss, by his own nephew, John of Swabia (Parricida), just as he was 
making preparations for the subjugation of the free Swiss. John 
expiated his deed in a cloister; but a fearful revenge was taken by the 
emperor's wife and daughter upon those who assisted in the assassi- 
nation (Wart, Bohn, and Eschenbach), and upon all then friends 
and relatives. 

§ 254. Albert's severity was the foundation of the Helvetic con- 
federation. Helvetia was a component part of the GTerinan empire, 
and was under the protection of prefects who exercised there the 
highest offices of jurisdiction. This office was at first filled by the 
rich and powerfid dukes of Zahringen, — the founders of Bern and other 
states. After the extinction of this house, the counts of 
Savoy in the South, and the Hapsburgs in the North, 
elevated themselves above the other families by their power and pos- 
sessions. The latter, to whom the landgravate of Aargau belonged, 
exercised in the name of the empire the functions of protectors over 
the original cantons on the lake of Lucerne, Schwyz, TJri, and 
Unterwalden, where they held possessions. 

When the Hapsburgs ascended the imperial throne they attempted 
to bring these cantons under the sovereignty of Austria. In further- 
ance of this purpose, Albert gave permission to the governors (Vogte), 



DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. 169 

who ruled the lands of Hapsburg, to exercise the laws of the empire 
over the free communities and peasants, and to abuse their position 
by the oppression of the simple, warlike, and freedom-loving moun- 
taineers. Upon this, the three oldest cantons, under the guidance of 
"Walther Furst, Werner Stauffacher, and Arnold Melchtal, concluded 
an alliance on the Butli for the protection of their liberties, the 
results of which were that the fortresses were stormed and the gover- 
nors expelled, after "William Tell (as the legend goes) had killed GTesler, 
the most tyrannical of their number with an arrow, because he had 
compelled him, for some trifling disobedience, to shoot an apple from 
the head of his son. Albert's assassination saved the Swiss from the 
effects of his anger, but his plans were taken up by his son Leopold. 
He marched against the forest cantons with an army, but suffered a 
severe overthrow in the narrow pass of Morgarten. The 
power of the Hapsburgs declined from this period in 
Switzerland. By the accession of the Austrian town of Lucerne, in 
1332, the whole of the shore of the lake of the four cantons fell into 
the power of the confederation, which was soon joined by Bern, 
a.d. 1339. Zurich, Zug, and many other towns. In the battle of 
a.d. 1351. Sempach (§ 261), the allies (like the Athenian demo- 
cracy at Marathon) underwent a fiery trial against the Austrian and 
German chivalry, and proved themselves worthy of their freedom. 

3. PHILIP THE PAIR OP PRANCE AND THE EMPEROR LOUIS THE 

BAVARIAN. 

§ 255. The ambitious Boniface VIII. , in whose person the papacy 
attained its highest glory, was the origin of its downfall. He assumed 
the office of umpire in a war between Philip IV. the Fair of France, 
and Edward I. of England ; and when Philip declined his interference, 
he forbade the levying of taxes upon the French ecclesiastics. Upon 
this, Philip prohibited the exportation of silver and gold from his 
kingdom, and by this means prevented the receipt of the papal 
revenue. The quarrel to which these proceedings gave rise, during 
which Boniface declared every man a heretic who did not believe that 
the king was subject to the pope in spiritual as well as temporal 
matters, and Philip by his deputies solemnly asserted the independ- 
ence of the throne, ended by an excommunication. Upon this, 
Nogaret, the chancellor of France, entered Italy, and having hired 
some troops, seized the pope in his native city Anagni, and held him 
prisoner. It is true that Boniface was rescued by the country people, 
who rushed to his assistance, and that he hastened to Borne; but the 
impression made by the disgrace upon the proud and violent man 
was so powerful that he went mad and died. The French 
party now succeeded not only in getting the excommu- 
nication withdrawn, but in inducing the new pope, Clement V. 



170 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

(hitherto Bishop of Bordeaux), to take up his residence in Avignon 

in the south of France, and thus to put the papacy under the influ- 

ence of the French court. This separation of the head 

of the church from Borne, which was mourned over as a 

second Babylonian captivity, lasted for nearly seventy years. 

§ 256. The dissolution of the order of the Temple (227 b) was 
the first consequence of the alliance between the pope and the French 
king. Dark reports of the blasphemous practices, of the secret crimes 
and vices, of the infidelity and voluptuousness of which the order 
had rendered itself guilty, gave Philip the Fair a pretext for suddenly 
seizing upon the persons of the Templars, and confiscating their vast 
possessions. By an unjust prosecution of six years, and by the 
tortures of the rack, a confession was at length obtained from the 
prisoners which appeared to prove the crimes laid to their charge ; 
and when fifty-four of their number retracted the confession extorted 
from them by torture, as untrue, they were condemned as apostates 
to a lingering death by fire. It was in vain that Jacob 
of Molay, the head master, protested against the pro- 
ceedings, and offered to disprove the whole of the accusations. 
He himself died on the funeral pile, after he had sum- 
moned the king and the pope to a higher judgment-seat. 
The people reverenced him as a martyr, and recognized the judgment 
of God in the death of the two princes which shortly followed. The 
French king appropriated the largest share of the estates and trea- 
sures of the Templars. 

Henry VII. § -^7. During these events, Henry VII. of Luxem- 

a.d. 1308— burg, was governing Germany not without renown. 
After adopting vigorous measures for the preservation of 
the internal peace of the empire, he took advantage of a contest for 
the crown of Bohemia to add this kingdom to the possessions of his 
own house, with the consent of the Bohemian estates, by marrying 
his son John to the sister of the last king, who was childless. 
Scarcely had he brought this affair, which was the foundation of the 
vast power of the house of Luxemburg, to a happy conclusion, than 
he turned his eyes to the long-forgotten and disunited 
Italy, and undertook an expedition to Borne. The advent 
of the emperor was greeted with joy by the oppressed Ghibellines ; 
and the great poet Dante of Florence (§ 249), celebrated his appear- 
ance by a Latin essay on monarchy, and by songs that were soon in 
the mouths of. every body. Henry received the crown of Lombardy 
in Milan, collected with rigour the taxes that were due in the towns of 
Upper Italy, and experienced an honourable reception in the Ghibel- 
line city of Pisa. But despite all his efforts to assume the character 
of an estabbsher of peace, the Guelfs and the haughty Florence, with 
the king of Naples at their head, rose against him with reason. The 



DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. 171 

pope himself opposed him, so that his coronation at Rome only took 
place after a lengthened contest. Upon marching into Tuscany for 
the purpose of humbling Florence, Henry died suddenly in the flower 
of his age, near the Arno. The joy displayed upon his death by the 
Guelfs, gave rise to the belief that he had been poisoned by a Domi- 
nican monk. The sorrowing Pisans buried him in the churchyard 
(Campo Santo) of their town. 

§ 258. The death of Henry YII. again produced a contest for the 
crown in Germany ; for of the seven princes who now usually exer- 
cised the right of election (Palatinate, Mayence, Treves, Cologne, 
Bohemia, Saxony, Brandenburg), some chose Louis of Bavaria, the 
others, Frederick the Pair of Austria. The consequence of this divi- 
sion was an eight years' war, which was carried on with particular 
vigour by Frederick's brother, Leopold. Despite the superior 
strength of the Austrian party, Louis, who was an excellent general, 
maintained his cause with success, especially after Leopold's force 
had been weakened at Morgarten (§ 254). It was not, however, 
till the battle of Mtihldorf (or Amfing), where Frederick 
was defeated and taken prisoner by the skill of the 
Nuremberg general, Seyfried Schwepperman, that Louis attained a 
decided superiority. Leopold, however, would not submit to a peace. 
Supported by the pope, John XXII., who pronounced an excommu- 
nication and an interdict against Louis for having aided the Ghibel- 
lines in Milan, and by several princes of the empire, Leopold con- 
tinued the war and attempted a new election of emperor. Upon this, 
Louis set at liberty his rival who was imprisoned in the castle of 
Trausnitz, upon condition that he should renounce the imperial 
dignity, and persuade his party to a peace. But when neither the 
pope nor Leopold would listen to the proposal, Frederick, true to his 
word, returned to captivity, a conduct which so moved his chivalrous 
opponent that he lived with him henceforth in the closest friendship, 
and would even have shared the empire with him had not the electors 
prevented it. Leopold died shortly afterwards, but the 
impetuous pope retained his animosity against Louis, 
which induced the latter to appoint Frederick regent of the empire, 
and undertake an expedition into Italy. 

§ 259. Louis was at first successful in Italy. Supported by the 
G-hibellines and the -Minorites, he made brilliant progress, and suc- 
ceeded in getting an anti-pope elected ; but when, for the purpose of 
satisfying his mercenary troops, he exacted heavy levies of money 
from the Italian towns, matters were quickly altered. His retreat to 
Germany, where Frederick had in the mean time died, completed the 
triumph of the papal party. On the other hand, the obstinacy with 
which John XXII. and his successor Benedict XII. retained the 
excommunication pronounced against Louis, and rejected all attempts 



172 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

at reconciliation, irritated the German princes to such a degree that 
at an electoral Diet held at Bense, they uttered the declaration, " that 
henceforth every election of emperor by the princes was valid, with- 
out the confirmation of the pope." The ecclesiastics who obeyed the 
interdict were treated as disturbers of the public peace, and deprived 
of their offices. The notorious influence exercised by the French 
court upon all the proceedings of the pope, and the avarice and 
sensuality of the head of the Church and of the cardinals in Avignon, 
diminished the authority of the court of Home. But Louis himself 
very soon forfeited the confidence and affection of the German 
princes by allowing his avarice and desire of enlarging his territories 
to lead him into unjust and violent measures. Thence it was that 
the French and papal party succeeded in gaining over a part of the 
electoral princes, and getting a rival emperor chosen from 
the house of Luxemburg. But the greater part of the 
German people, and particularly the imperial towns, sided with Louis, 
so that the new emperor, Charles IV. (son of King John of Bohe- 
mia), was not generally recognized, until the robust Louis lost his 
life in a bear-hunt, near Munich, and his successor, Gun- 
ter of Schwarzburg, elected by the Bavarian party, had 
sunk into an early grave at Frankfort. 

4. THE EMPERORS OE THE HOUSE OE LUXEMBURG. 

„ , jy § 260. Charles IV". was a sagacious prince who was 

a.d. 1347 — intent upon his own interests and the increase of the 
1373. power of his house, and in whose mind money and pro- 

perty held a higher place than honour or renown. It was through 
him that the imperial power lost all respect in Italy, where he per- 
mitted the imperial privileges to be purchased by the towns and 
princes. The contests between Guelf and Ghibelline ceased from 
this time, but they only gave place to contentions between the princes 
and free towns concerning the enlargement of their territories ; 
mercenary troops were now employed (as formerly in Greece) instead 
of the earlier mditia, and the enterprising leaders of these bands 
(Condottieri) not unfrequently held the fate of states in their hands, 
and succeeded in getting possession of their government. The 
efforts of Charles in Germany also were chiefly directed to the 
gratification of his avarice and lust of territory. He sold the liber- 
ties and privileges of the imperial towns ; he granted letters of 
nobility for money ; he added Brandenburg and other territories to 
his patrimonial possessions. His agency was most beneficially felt 
in Bohemia, which attained by his means to greater pi^osperity. 
Artists and artisans were summoned from Germany and Italy, towns 
(Carlsbad) and villages were built, agriculture and trade encouraged, 
roads and bridges planned, and heaths and forests brought into culti- 



DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. 173 

vation. Charles, with the consent of the pope and the co-operation 
of the poet Petrarch, erected the first German univer- 
sity in Prague (§ 249), which soon numbered from 
5000 to 7000 students. Prom Charles IV. emanated the first im- 
perial code of laws known by the name of the Golden Bull, 
which referred the choosing of emperors exclusively to the seven 
electors, and determined the precedence of the princes. 

§ 261. The imperial authority was much decayed, and confusion 
and lawlessness prevailed all over Germany. The laws respecting 
disturbance of the public peace were little regarded ; club law (faust- 
recht), the only law attended to, called upon every man to take care 
of himself, and alliances were formed to do this more effectually. 
This state of disorder became particularly prevalent under Charles' 
Wenceslaus son an< ^ s " accessor j Wenceslaus, a rude, hot-headed man, 
a.d. 1378 — devoted to drink. Por whilst the emperor was leading a 
1400. dissolute life in Bohemia, devoting himself to hunting, 

quarrelling with his nobles and the clergy, and rendering himself 
hateful and contemptible by his cruelty, and barbarous conduct to the 
vicar Nepomuk, whom he ordered to be thrown from the bridge of 
Prague into the Moldau, the German empire, with its battles and its 
miseries, was left to its fate. The towns in Swabia, in Pranconia, 
and on the Bhine, united themselves in an alliance to preserve the 
peace of the country, and for defence against the rapacioiis nobles. 
The knights, who gained their living by plunder and highway robbery, 
and who were threatened by this alliance, followed the example of 
their enemies, and strengthened themselves by confederations of 
knights (called the Schlegler, and the Lowen and Hornerbund) . The 
two confederations were perpetually engaged in war with each other, 
till at length the murder of the bishop of Salzburg by a Bavarian 
duke occasioned the great cities' war, which produced 
extreme distress in the south of Germany. The citizens 
were victorious in Bavaria ; in Pranconia the fortune of war was 
rendered dubious by the courage of the JSTuremburgers ; but in 
Swabia, where the valiant enemy of the towns, Eberhard the Grumb- 
ler of Wirtemberg stood at the head of the nobility, the burghers 
suffered great loss near Doffingen, and at "Worms and Prankfort suc- 
cumbed to the iron ranks of the knights of Hesse and the Palatinate. 
About the same time, the Swiss confederation was contending with 
far greater success against the nobles of Southern Germany. Duke 
Leopold of Austria invaded the freedom-loving mountaineers with a 
host of armed nobles, who reverenced him as the flower of chivalry. 
But in the battle of Sempach, where the heroic Arnold 
Winkelried of Unterwalden "made a path" for his 
countrymen into the iron-clad ranks of the knights, by embracing a 
number of their lances and bivrying the points in his bosom, the 



174 T1IE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

proud duke, with G56 of his nobles, fell beneath the maces of the 
Swiss peasants. 

§ 262. The inability of the emperor to remedy the prevailing con- 
fusion at length induced the electors, in a diet at Lahn- 
stein, to pronounce Wenceslaus' deposition, " because he 
had not aided the peace of the Church, had sold the title of duke to 
the rich and crafty Visconti in Milan, had not maintained the public 
peace, and had governed tyrannically and with cruelty in Bohemia." 
Rupert, a.d. Rupert of the Palatinate was elected in his place ; he was 
1400—1410. the grandson of that Rupert who in the year of the 
battle of Sempach had founded the university of Heidelberg. But 
even he, despite many good qualities, was not equal to the diffi- 
culties of the times. He was compelled to grant the princes and 
estates the right of forming confederations, and of maintaining the 
public peace in their own way ; and when he attempted to restore 
Milan to the empire, he suffered a defeat from the Italian Condottieri 
(§ 260), who had discovered a more scientific system of tactics. He 
was equally unsuccessful in his attempts to restore tranquillity to the 
Church, an object that was first accomplished with unspeakable diffi- 
culty by his successor, Sigismund, the brother of Wenceslaus. The 

„. . , great council of the Church, that was held by Sigismund 
Sigismund, ° ' •> o 

a.d. 1410— for this purpose, exhausted the treasury to that degree, 
143 7- that the emperor was obliged at first to pledge the March 

of Brandenburg and the electoral dignity to Frederick of Hohenzol- 
lem, and afterwards to surrender them to him as his private and 
hereditary property. 

5. THE DIVISION IN THE CHUECH AND THE GEEAT COUNCILS. 

§ 263. It had long been wished that the papal chair shoidd be 
removed from Avignon to Home ; but the cardinals who were in the 
French interest, and who felt themselves better and more inde- 
pendent under the mild and beautiful sky of Southern France, pre- 
vented the measure. This at length induced the Italian party to 
elect a pope of their own. By this means the Church got two popes, 
one in Avignon, the other in Rome, each of whom declared himself 
the rightfully elected head of the Church, and fulminated anathemas 
against his rival and his adherents. The whole of Western Christen- 
dom was divided, consciences perplexed, and the Church rent asunder. 
It was in vain that the synod of Pisa attempted to heal the evil by 
deposing one pope and electing another — the former two maintained 
their claims, so that the Church was now triply divided. A general 
discontent spread through the Christian world, and engendered a 
loud demand for a reformation of the Church both in its head and 
members. Whilst the moderate party, and in particular the learned 
theologians of the university of Paris (Sorbonne), wished to bring 



DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. ] 75 

about this reformation by a general council which should be 
superior to the pope, the disciples and adherents of the 
Oxford professor, John Wicliff, aimed at a thorough 
change both in the doctrine and constitution of the Church. Wick- 
liff had not only declared the papacy to be an unchristian institu- 
tion, and preached zealously against absolution, monachism, the wor- 
ship of saints, and similar matters, but had stood forward as a 
reformer, by translating the Bible into English, and rejecting many 
articles of faith, as auricular confession, celibacy, and transubstan- 
tiation. The most celebrated of his followers was John Huss, pro- 
fessor in Prague, a man distinguished for his learning and moral life, 
as well as by Christian gentleness. He preached against the abuses 
of the papacy ; against the wealth and secular power of the clergy ; 
against monachism and absolution : and although the pope excommuni- 
cated him and condemned his writings, the number of his adherents, 
among whom a Bohemian nobleman, Hieronymus of Eaulfisch, dis- 
tinguished himself by his zeal, increased every day. The Germans 
in the university of Prague were curtailed of their privileges for 
showing an inclination t<5 the new doctrines of Huss, for which 
reason 5000 students and professors quitted the place, and thus 
brought about the foundation of other universities, that of Leipsic 
among the first. 

§ 264. When at length, Pope John XXIII. , importuned by the 
Emperor Sigismund, called the Council of Constance, 
Constance, troops of temporal and spiritual dignitaries of all nations 
a.d. 1414 — poured into the town, where the splendour of the whole 
"West was at once united. 150,000 men are said to have 
assembled there. The unity and reformation of the Church was the 
lofty aim of the synod. In the first place, therefore, the three popes 
were either deposed or persuaded to resign ; and when John XXIII. 
seized the opportunity afforded by a tournament to escape in disguise 
by the aid of Erederick of Austria, and recalled his abdication, the 
council declared itself independent and superior to the pope, and 
united with the emperor in punishing the refractory. Erederick 
of Austria was outlawed, and deprived of Aargau and other posses- 
sions by the Swiss, and John was for a long time held prisoner 
in the castle of Heidelberg. But the efforts of the Erench and 
Germans, who wished in the first place to reform the Church and then 
to elect a new pope, were frustrated by the Italians (Ultramontani), 
who insisted before all things upon an election of pope. Their opinion 
prevailed, and Martin V. was raised to the papal chair. He was a 
moderate man, who contrived, by abolishing a few abuses, and by 
skilfully conducted negotiations, to divide the votes and baffle the 
efforts of the council. In this way, the hopes and wishes of the 



176 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

people were disappointed; the pope retained his power, and the 
Church was left in her corruption. But the Council of Constance has 
enriched history with one deed of horror, — the burning of Huss and 
Hieronymus. The council proceeded at its commencement to an 
examination of doctrines deviating from those of the Church, and had 
condemned "Wicliff's writings to the flames, and summoned Huss 
to answer for his opinions. Huss proceeded to Constance, provided 
with an imperial passport by which he was assured of a safe return 
to his home, but was imprisoned as soon as he arrived there, and 
accused of disseminating heresy. It was in vain that he defended 
himself with dignity against the charges — his judges were his accusers ; 
it was in vain that his friends appealed to the imperial safe-conduct, 
— the synod laid down the principle, that no faith was to be kept 
with heretics, and demanded an unconditional abjuration. "When Huss 
refused to do this, he was condemned to suffer death by 
fire as an obstinate teacher of heresy ; a doom which he 
underwent with the firmness and composure of a martyr. A year 
later, Hieronymus also endured the agonies of the bimiing pile with 
the courage of a stoic. 

§ 265. The intelligence of this horrible event at Constance incited 
the Hussites to a furious rebgious war. The cup, which according to 
the views of Huss was not to be withheld from the laity, was borne 
before their armies as the symbol of their cause (hence TJtraquists 
and Calixtines) ; and a heavy vengeance was exacted from the priests 
who refused to administer it. It was in vain that the pope fulminated 
an interdict against the adherents of Huss, then numbers increased 
daily ; they stormed the town-house of Prague, and murdered the 
counsellors, which so enraged the old Emperor "Wences- 
laus, that he died of apoplexy. Sigismund ought now to 
have become king of Bohemia also ; but the whole nation flew to arms 
to prevent the faithless emperor from taking possession of the 
country. John Ziska, a general expert in war, valiant, and endowed 
with a wonderful talent of governing the masses, placed himself at 
its head. It was in vain that Sigismund led three imperial armies 
against the Hussites ; his troops recofled in dismay before the wild 
fury of the enraged people. The Hussites burnt down the Bohemian 
churches and convents, and carried their ravages into the neighbour- 
ing countries. The name of Ziska, the blind general, was a terror to 
the nations. After his death, the moderate party (Calixtines) sepa- 
rated themselves from the radicals (Tahorites). The latter, under 
the conduct of Procopius the Great and the Little, continued their 
incendiary course, ravaged Saxony, and extorted tribute from Bran- 
denburg and Bavaria, whilst the Calixtines consented to a peace 
when the Council of Basle consented to the use of the cup in the 



DECAY OF CHIVALRY AND CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH. 177 

Lord's Supper, and to preaching in the vernacular tongue. It was 
..„„ only when the Taborites suffered a defeat near Prague, 
and the two Procopius were killed, that the emperor, by 
the dexterity of his chancellor Schlick, succeeded in bringing them 
to a peace ; whereupon Sigismund was acknowledged king. But the 
glory of Bohemia was humbled to the dust. A few decades later a 
small party of the former Hussites separated from the Church and 
formed a separate sect, since known as the Bohemian and Moravian 
Brethren, "poor, scripture-proof, and peaceful." 
Council of § ^66. In the council of Basle, to the summoning of 

Basle, a.d. which, Martin V., successor of Eugenius IV., had, after 
"" long hesitation, consented, the reformation of the Church, 
which had been interrupted in that of Constance, was to be con- 
cluded, and the Hussite controversy arranged. But the proceedings 
here soon took a course that seemed to endanger the papal power. 
The assembly, which consisted in part of the lower order of clergy, 
diminished the money charges that the court of Rome imposed upon 
the provincial churches, and interdicted the encroachments of the 
pope in the filling up of bishoprics and benefices. Eugenius was 
rendered so anxious by these and other similar resolutions, that he 
seized the first pretext for removing the council to Eerrara, and 
afterwards to Elorence. But many of the clergy would not attend, 
but chose another pope, and again asserted the former principle, that 
a synod of the Church was superior to the pope, and that the former 
and not the latter was infallible. Upon this, Eugenius, encouraged by 
the fears entertained both by princes and people, of another division 
in the Church, anathematized the refractory members of the council, 
and rejected their decisions ; and for the purpose of overcoming 
more surely the opposition of the Germans, gained over the crafty 
Italian, iEneas Sylvius (afterwards Pius II.) , who was private 
secretary to the emperor Erederick III. By the aid of this shrewd 
man, who is also known as an author, the pope succeeded in winning 
over the weak emperor to the Aschaffenburg concordat, by means of 
which, the Church remained in its former state, and all the abuses and 
extortions, with a few trifling exceptions, were continued. It was in 
vain that the patriotically-minded Gregory of Heimburg advocated 
the liberties of the Church and the rights of Germany with intelli- 
gence and eloquence ; abandoned by the emperor and most of the 
princes, the council, after a little hesitation, recognized Eugenius's 
successor, Nicholas V., as lawful pope, and then dissolved itself. In 
this way, the papacy came forth, for the second time, victorious from 
the fight, but less by the inherent power of truth than by uneccle- 
siastical expedients. 



17S THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 



G. GERMANY UNDER EREDERICK III. AND MAXIMILIAN I. 

§ 267. When the male line of the house of Luxemburg expired 
Albert II. of wu ^ x Sigmund, his son-in-law, Albert II. of Austria, 
Austria, a.d. ascended the imperial throne of Germany, which from 
'~ 39- this time remained in possession of the Hapsburg- Aus- 
trian family. Albert was a well-disposed and energetic man ; but as 
Bohemia and Hungary engaged the whole of his exertions, he coidd 
effect nothing of importance during the short period of his govern- 
FrederickHI men ^- His nephew, Frederick III., was his successor in 
a.d. 1440— the empire, a prince endowed with domestic virtues, but 
possessing slender talents for government, and who 
opposed nothing to the troubles of his lengthened reign but a didl 
and passive indifference. He looked quietly on while the Turks took 
possession of Constantinople, and carried their ravages into the 
hereditary territories of Austria, when Hungary and Bohemia elected 
native kings, when Charles the Bold of Burgundy extended his 
dominions to the banks of the Bhine (§ 293), when Milan and 
Lombardy were separated from the German empire (§ 261). In 
Germany, the imperial authority fell into utter contempt, the princes 
made themselves independent, and exercised the privilege of private 
warfare, without hesitation. The Swabian alliance was engaged in a 
furious war with Albert (Achilles or Ulysses), the valiant margrave of 
the Brandenburg territories in Franconia (Bayruth), a war in which 
nine battles were fought and 200 villages reduced to ashes. The 
neighbourhood of the Bhine and the Neckar was desolated by the 
war of the Palatinate, during which, the palgrave, Fre- 
derick the Victorious, gained a glorious victory near 
Seckenheim, and made prisoners of his enemies, Ulrick of Wurtern- 
burg, the margrave of Baden, and the bishop of Metz ; but was unable 
to prevent the deposition of his ally, the banished arch- 
bishop, Dieter of Mayence, in whose defence he had taken 
up arms. 

§ 268. This state of disorder and self-redress increased the 
desire for a fresh constitution of the empire. But as the princes 
refused to sacrifice any of their real or pretended rights, every pro- 
posal that seemed likely to increase the power of the emperor or 
diminish that of the princes, encountered a resolute opposition. At 
Maximilian length, Maximilian I. agreed with the electors, the secular 
I., a.d. 1493 and spiritual nobles, and the representatives of the free 
towns, at the imperial diet at Worms, to a form of con- 
a.d. 1495. stitution which restrained the right of private warfare, 
but completely undermined the authority of the emperor. At this 
diet, the eternal Land-peace was established, and every act of self- 
redress by arms forbidden, under pain of ban and outlawry. An 



FRANCE. 179 

imperial chamber was at once established to compose all quarrels 
among the members of the empire, and a short time afterwards the 
empire was divided into ten circles, 1. The Austrian. 2. The Bava- 
rian. 3. The Swabian. 4. The Franconian. 5. The Rhenish elec- 
torate. 6. The Upper Rhenish. 7. The Lower Rhenish Westphalian. 
8. Upper Saxony. 9. Lower Saxony, and, 10. The Burgundian. 
By this alteration the power of the princes was raised to a still 
greater height, so that at last they could act in their own territories 
as absolute rulers. The confederates, who were at that time in 
alliance with France, refused to recognize the imperial chamber, and 
denied the contingent of troops. Hereupon, Maximilian attempted 
to compel them by force of arms, but was worsted in the 
contest, and obliged to forego his demands in the peace 
of Basle, and to admit the independence of the Swiss of Germany. 

§ 269. Maximilian's reign forms the transition period between the 
middle age and the modern time. He himself, with his stately aspect, 
his bold and dangerous huntings, his valiant deeds in battle and 
tournament, may well be looked upon as the "last knight" on the 
imperial throne of Germany ; his love of the decaying chivalrous 
poetry, his marriage with Maria of Burgundy, his wars in the Nether- 
lands and in Italy, are all stamped with the character of the middle 
age. On the other hand, it was at this time that the commence- 
ments of a more refined political science, and of a greater intercourse 
among nations, displayed themselves, which, combined with new 
discoveries and inventions, brought about the modern period. 



VI. HISTORY OF THE REMAINING EUROPEAN NATIONS DURING 
THE MIDDLE AGE. 

1. FRANCE. 

a. FRANCE UNDER. THE HOUSE OF CAPET. 

§ 270. The first successors of Hugh Capet (§ 205) possessed but 
little power and a narrow territory. The dukes and counts of the 
different provinces looked upon the king, who, properly, was only 
lord of Prance, as their equal, and only allowed him the first rank 
among themselves, in so far as they were obliged to recognize him as 
their feudal superior. The nobles dared not weaken the rights that 
appertained to him in this capacity, lest they should afford an example 
of breach of faith to their own subjects, and encourage them to similar 
behaviour towards themselves. For the rest, the possessions of the 
great vassals were independent counties and principalities, which had 
no closer connexion with the French throne than the western terri- 
tories on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne, which belonged to the king 
of England ; or the eastern (Burgundian) lands on the Rhone and 

N 2 



180 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

the Jura, which were portions of the German, empire. But in the 
attempt to increase the kingly power, the house of Capet were not 
less aided by their good fortune than by their wisdom. It was for- 
tunate, that owing to the lengthened lives of most of their kings, the 
throne was seldom vacant, that there was almost always a son of age 
to succeed his father, and that consequently there was never an 
interregnum. But it was wisdom in the first kings to have their 
eldest sons crowned during their lives, and to make them their 
partners in the government, so that on the death of the father little 
Lo is VII or B0 cn ange was suffered. The most important kings 
a.d. 1137 — after Hugh Capet, were Louis VII., who undertook the 
1180. second crusade, and during his absence entrusted the 

Philip Au- government in Trance to the politic Abbot Suger of 
S ustl * a H-> St. Denis ; Philip Augustus II., who wrested Normandy 
1223. and the other territories in the west from the English 

Louis VIII., king, John Lackland; and Louis VIII. , who enlarged 
a.d. 1223— hig dominions on the south by the war against the Albi- 

genses (§ 228). But the reigns which had the greatest 
a.d. 1220— influence upon the history of France were those of St. 
1270. Louis and Philip the Pair. The former improved the 

laws, and caused the royal courts of justice to be looked upon as the 
highest in the land, and that the disputes of the nobles among them- 
selves or with their vassals were brought before them for decision : 
the latter, on the other hand, increased the consequence of the towns 
Philip the hy granting various privileges and liberties to the citizens, 
Fair, a.d. and by being the first who summoned the representatives 
1285—1314. f th e towns to the diet during his contest with the pope. 
(§ 255.) After the death of Philip's three sons, who reigned one after 

the other, but left no male heirs, the Prench throne 
A ' D * ' ' passed to the house of Valois. 

b. TRANCE UNDER THE HOUSE OE VALOIS (a.D. 1328 — 1589). 

§ 271. Philip VI. of Valois, brother's son of Philip the Pair, 
Philin VI inherited the Prench throne. But Edward III. of Eng- 
a.d. 1328— land also asserted his claims, as son of a daughter of 
1347. Philip the Pair. "Without regard to the Salic law, which 

prohibited the succession of females, he assumed the title of king of 
Prance, and made war upon Philip. After a bloody contest of a few 
years, the battle of Crecy was fought, in which the 
English were the victors, and the flower of the Prench 
chivalry, together with John, the blind king of Bohemia, fell on the 
field. The possession of the important town of Calais was the fruit 
T , , of the day. Philip died in the following year, and his 

Good, a.d. son, John the Good, succeeded to the contested crown. 
1347—1304. j] a g er to obliterate the memory of Crecy, he attacked 



FRANCE. 181 

the English army, which was under the command of Edward III.'s 

heroic son, the Black Prince, but suffered a decisive defeat at Poictiers, 

and was obliged to proceed as a captive to the capital of 

England. Whilst he was absent, the kingdom was governed 

by the crown prince (Dauphin) . During his rule, an insurrection broke 

out in Paris and over the whole land, which was attended with great 

devastations and outrages, until the imperfectly-armed 

citizens and peasants were subdued by the Erench 

knights, and visited with severe punishment. Shortly after this, a 

peace was established between Erance and England, by which Calais 

and the south-west of Erance was surrendered to the 

English, and a heavy ransom promised for John, whilst 

Edward, on the other hand, renounced his pretensions to the Erench 

throne. But when the collection of the ransom money was delayed, 

John voluntarily returned into captivity, and died in 
a.d. 1364. T , 

London. 

Charles V. § 2 ^ 2 - John's son, Charles V. (the Wise), healed the 

a.d. 1364— wounds of his country. He quieted men's minds by his 

good and gentle government, and by prudence and valour, 

recovered the lands that had been lost on the Loire and the Garonne ; 

so that when the Black Prince fell a victim to a wasting 

disease, and Edward III. shortly after followed him into 

the grave, nothing remained to the English of all their conquests but 

Calais. But under his successor, Charles VI., who became insane 

r , , VT shortly after coming of age, Erance again fell into a state 

a.d. 1380— of confusion and lawlessness. Two powerful court parties, 

1422. headed by the uncle of the king (the duke of Burgundy), 

and the king's brother (the duke of Orleans), contended for the 

government ; whilst the burghers rebelled against the heavy imposts, 

and demanded an increase of their privileges. About the same timo 

in which the towns were waging war against the knights in Germany 

(§ 2G1), the Swiss peasants were contending against the nobility, 

and a, dangerous popular insurrection, under Wat Tyler and others, 

was making rapid progress in England, the citizen and peasant class 

rose against the court and the nobility in Elanders and Erance also. 

But want of union among the insurgents gave the latter 

the victory, and the outbreak was followed by a diminu- 

tion of the privileges of the people. The Burgundian party favoured 

the citizens, the Orleans party the nobility. 

§ 273. The chivalrous king, Henry V. of England, took advantage 

of these circumstances to renew the war with Erance. He demanded 

the former possessions back again ; and when this was refused, he 

entered Erance by Calais, and renewed at Agincourt, on 

A ' D ' ' the Somme, the days of Crecy and Poictiers. The 

Erench army, four times the number of its opponents, was over- 



132 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

thrown, and the flower of the French chivalry either fell in the field, 
or were taken prisoners by the enemy ; nothing stood between the 
victor and Paris, where party violence had just now attained its 
highest point, and murders and insurrections were matters of daily 
occurrence. The Orleans party joined the Dauphin, whilst the Bur- 
gundian party, with the queen Isabella, united themselves with the 
English, and acknowledged Henry V. and his descendants as the heirs 
of the French crown. The whole of the country to the north of the 
Loire was soon in the hands of the English. But Henry 

A D 14^2 . . • 

V. was snatched away by death in the midst of his heroic 

course, in the same year in which the crazy Charles VI. sank into 

the grave, and the Dauphin took possession of the throne under the 

m i -17-tt title of Charles VII. But this made little difference to 
Charles VII., 

a.d. 1422— France. The English and their allies proclaimed Henry 
1461. yj #j who was scarcely a year old, the rightful ruler of the 

country, and retained their superiority in the field, so that they 
already held Orleans in siege. 

§ 274. In this necessity, the Maid of Orleans, a 
peasant girl of Dom Eemy in Lorraine, who gave out 
that she had been summoned to the redemption of France by a 
heavenly vision, aroused the sinking courage of Charles and his 
soldiers. Under her banner, the town of Orleans was delivered, the 
king conducted to Eheims to be crowned, and the greater part of 
their conquests wrested from the English. The faith in her heavenly 
mission inspired the French with courage and self-confidence, and 
filled the English with fear and despair. This effect remained after 
Joan of Arc had fallen into the hands of the latter, and 
had been given up to the flames on a pretended charge of 
blasphemy and sorcery. The English lost one province after another ; 
and when Philip the Good of Burgundy reconciled himself with the 
king, Calais soon became their last and only possession 
in the land of France. Paris opened its gates and 
a.d. 1436. received Charles with acclamations. He reigned over 
France in peace for twenty-five years ; but he was a weak man, who 
suffered himself to be guided by women and favourites. He was 
. XT followed by Louis XL, a crafty but politic prince, who 
a.d. 1461— by cunning, violence, and unexampled tyranny, rendered 
1483. -the power of the throne absolute, and enlarged and con- 

solidated his empire. He robbed the nobility of all their choicest 
privileges, and gradually united all the great fiefs with the crown. 
He then, by the assistance of the Swiss (whose hardy youth he and 
his successor engaged as mercenaries), overthrew Charles the Bold, 
and made himself master of the dukedom of Burgundy. The stings 
of conscience and the fear of men tortured him in the 
a.d. 1483 — ' lonely castles where he spent the last years of his life. 



ENGLAND. 183 

1498. His two successors, Charles VIII. and Louis XII., 

1S 1493— con( l liere( i Brittany, but dissipated the strength of the 
1515. kingdom in their expeditions to Italy. 

2. EKGLAND. 

xj tt § 275. "With Henry II., of Anjou, the great-grandson 

a.d. 1154— of William the Conqueror (§ 207), the renowned race of 
1189. Plantagenet ascended the English throne. They pos- 

sessed much land on the Loire and the Garonne, and as Normandy 
also belonged to the English, the whole of the west of Erance was in 
the power of the kings of England. Many quarrels and battles arose 
from this state of things, for the kings of Erance laid claim to the 
rights of feudal supremacy over these western lands, which rights the 
English kings refused to render. Henry II., a contemporary of Fre- 
derick Barbarossa, was a powerful and intelligent regent, who acquired 
especial renown by his improvement in the administration of the 
laws. In furtherance of this object, he attempted, by the Constitutions 
of Clarendon, so to limit the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, that the clergy 
should be subject to the royal tribunals in temporal matters, without 
any appeal to the pope. Upon this point Henry had a violent con- 
test with the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket. Thomas 
rejected the Constitutions of Clarendon, and dismissed every priest 
that submitted to them ; and when he was threatened with legal pro- 
ceedings he quitted England and anathematized Henry. But an 
arrangement was brought about, for a short time, by the intervention 
of the pope. But scarcely was Thomas returned to Canterbury, when 
he resumed all his former severity against the clergy who received the 
Constitutions of Clarendon. The king, who was just then in arms 
against Erance, suffered an exclamation of discontent against Thomas 
to escape him, which induced four of his servants to hasten to Eng- 
land, and to slaughter the archbishop on the steps of the 
altar. This sacrilegious deed occasioned universal horror, 
and procured the pope a complete triumph in England. The mur- 
derers were punished, the Constitutions of Clarendon abolished, and 
Thomas Becket canonized. Thousands made pilgrimages to his altar ; 
and the king, a few years afterwards, gave a memorable example of 
his penitence, by suffering the monks to scourge his bare shoulders at 
the grave of the martyr. 

§ 276. Two of Henry's sons survived their father ; Eichard Lion- 
It' h d L' heart (§ 223), and John Lackland. Much as the former 
heart, a.d. distinguished himself by his courage and chivalrous 
1189—1199. ^ arm g ) h^ r eign was not advantageous to England. The 

T , T , latter was worsted in every contest in which he engaged. 
John Lack- •; ° 

land, a.d. In the first place, he lost Normandy, and all the hereditary 

1199—1216. possessions of his house on the Loire and the Garonne to 



]Sj. THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

the shrewd and enterprising Philip Augustus of Prance ; and when 
he got involved in a quarrel with the pope, about the appointment to 
the chair of the archbishopric of Canterbury, in consequence of which 
the holy father pronounced an anathema and interdict upon England, 
released his subjects from their oath of allegiance, and summoned the 
king of Prance to take possession of the land, John humbled himself, 
surrendered the throne of England by a solemn act to the pope, and 
received it back again from the hands of the legate as a papal fief, in 
return for a yearly tribute of 1000 marks. John was now released 
from the interdict, and the Prench king forbidden to prosecute the 
expedition against him. Enraged at this disgraceful transaction of a 
king who, by his severity, arbitrariness, and cruelty, had embittered 
every class against himself, the people of England seized 
their arms and compelled John, by the grant of the 
great charter (Magna Charta), in a meadow near Windsor, to lay the 
foundation of the free constitution of England. The long reign of 
„ TTT John's son, Henry III., was favourable to the growth of 
a.d. 1216— liberty, melancholy as, on the whole, the condition of the 
1272. land under him was. His extravagant profuseness to 

favourites, and the exactions of the papal legates and the Italian 
clergy, inflicted grievous wounds on the prosperity of the country, 
and at length drove the people to rebel and seize upon the king 
and his family, till the abuses were removed, and fresh liberties 
granted. 

§ 277. Henry III. was succeeded by his chivafrous son, Edward I., 
El d I whose reign is rendered memorable by a succession of 
a.d. 1272— bloody wars. He added the hitherto independent "Wales 
1307. t hig dominions, introduced there the laws and constitu- 

tion of England, and was the first who gave the title of Prince of 
Wales to the heir to the throne. Upon a quarrel for the 
crown breaking out shortly after in Scotland, between 
Robert Bruce and John Baliol, in which he was chosen umpire, Ed- 
ward took advantage of the opportunity to establish the much con- 
tested feudal superiority of the English kings over Scotland, and de- 
cided in favour of Baliol, who was ready to do him homage. This 
irritated the Scotch, who were proud of their independence. They 
seized the sword, and under the conduct of heroic knights like Wal- 
lace, fought many battles for their liberties which are renowned in 
song and legend. Purious contests drenched the plains of the south 
of Scotland with the blood of heroes ; Wallace died as a prisoner by 
the axe of the executioner. The coronation stone of the Scottish 
kings at Scone was brought to London, where it still ornaments 
Westminster Abbey ; Edward's victorious host marched through the 
whole of Scotland as far as the highlands, and yet the Scots still 
maintained their independence. Robert Bruce, the grandson of the 



ENGLAND. Jg5 

before-mentioned candidate for the throne, after many changes of 
fortune, obtained possession of the crown, which became hereditary 
in his family, and passed at length to the related house of Stuart. 
Edward II., Edward's son of the same name was a weak prince, 
ad. 1307— who could neither make conquests abroad nor preserve 
peace and order at home. The nobles repeatedly took up 
arms against him, killed his favourites, and at last looked quietly on, 
whilst the queen and her paramour, Mortimer, thrust the unfortunate 
monarch from the throne, and had him put to a cruel death in prison. 
Edward III., But when his energetic son, Edward III., came of age, 
a.d. 1327 — he punished the atrocious deed by executing Mortimer, 
and banishing the queen to a solitary fortress. 
§ 278. Edward III. governed with vigour and renown. He took 
measures for checking the encroachments of the pope upon the 
English Church, in which he was actively supported by the Oxford 
professor, Wicliff, and granted to many towns the privilege of sending 
representatives to parliament, as his predecessors had before done. 
By this means, the number of representatives increased to such an 
extent that they were divided, and from this time, the nobles and 
bishops formed the Upper House (House of Peers), and the members 
for the towns, the Lower House of Parliament. Wo tax could be 
imposed without their consent. The wars of succession which Ed- 
ward III. and his son, the Black Prince, waged -with Erance, were to 
the advantage of the English (§ 271). But the government of his 
Richard II. grandson and successor, Eichard II., was disturbed by 
a.d. 1377 — domestic troubles ; a dangerous insurrection of the people 
was only suppressed with difficulty by the ready courage 
of the king ; and when Bichard at length banished his cousin, Henry 
of Lancaster, who was the originator of the disturbances, from the 
kingdom, Henry formed a party, had the king deposed from the 
throne by an act of parliament, and then assumed himself the royal 
House of title. Bichard died of starvation in a remote castle, 
Lancaster. whilst Henry IV., in whose person the house of Lancaster 
a.d. 1399— ascended the English throne, was securing to himself and 
1413. his posterity, by his prudence and valour, the crown he had 

so flagitiously obtained. An insurrection of the English nobles under 
the duke of Northumberland and his heroic son Percy, surnamed 
Hotspur, ended with the defeat of the insurgents. The followers of 
"Wicliff, called Lollards, were persecuted for the sake of propitiating 
the clergy in favour of the royal house. Henry IV. was succeeded 
Henry V. ^y his more valiant son, Henry V., whose youthful follies, 
a.d. 1413 — as well as his nobleness of soul and heroic greatness, have 
1422. been pourtrayed in so masterly a way by the great British 

poet, Shakespeare. He conducted successful wars with Erance, but 



J 86 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

all that he gained by his fortune and courage was again lost in the 
reign of his infant son, Henry VI. 

§ 279. This sixth Heury was the most unfortunate prince that 
Henry VI. ever sa ^ on a throne. The crown of Trance, which he 
a.d. 1422 — had received when a child of one year old (§ 274), was 
wrested from him by the Maid of Orleans, and he was 
deprived of his English possessions also, by the wars of the Red and 
the White Roses. Richard, duke of York, great-grandson of king 
Edward III., deemed that he had better pretensions to the crown of 
England than Henry VI. He formed a powerful party, unfurled the 
banner of rebellion, and commenced the bloody civil war which, from 
the cognizance borne by the chiefs of the parties, was called the "War 
of the Bed (Lancaster) and White (York) Rose. It is true that 
Richard was defeated in a furious battle by the forces of the queen, 
who ornamented his head with a paper crown, and placed it upon the 
House of battlements of York. But Richard's eldest son, the 
York. chivalrous Edward, revenged the insults offered to his 

a.d. 1461— father. He got possession of the throne, and, despite the 
1483. many changes of fortune he met with during his reign, 

he finally maintained himself upon it, after Henry of Lancaster, who 
had four times exchanged the crown for a prison, had ended his 
miserable existence in the Tower, and his son had been put to death. 
But the blood-stained throne brought no blessing to the house of 
York. Edward first got rid of his brother Clarence by assassination ; 
and when he himself died, leaving behind him two infant princes, his 
younger brother, Richard (III.), had these put to death 
a.d. 1483 — in the Tower, and took possession of the throne, upon 
1485. which he in vain hoped to secure himself by fresh crimes. 

Henry Tudor, a descendant of the royal house of Lancaster, who had 
saved himself from the general ruin of his family by flying to Erance, 
landed on the coast of England and won crown and vic- 
tory in the field of Bosworth, where Richard was slain. 
House of Upon this, Henry VII., with whom the house of Tudor 
Henry VII. rose to the throne, brought about a reconciliation between 
a.d. 1485— the Roses by marrying the daughter of Edward IV. The 
history of the world scarcely relates another war in which 
so many atrocities were committed as in the contest between the Red 
and the White Rose. Eighty members of royal families, and the orna- 
ments of the nobility, fell by the sword. Owing to this, the politic 
and hard-hearted Henry VII. could give greater power to the crown 
than it had possessed under the Plantagenets. 

3. SPAIN. 

§ 280. Eor several centuries, the two kingdoms of Aragon and 



SPAIN. 187 

Castile (§ 191) stood side by side in separate independence. The 
former attempted to extend itself towards the east, and gained pos- 
session, not only of the coast lands of Catalonia, Yalentia, and Murcia, 
and the Spanish islands, Majorca and Minorca, but subjected, at 
Alf V different times, Sardinia and Sicily, and in the reign of 
a.d. 1416 — Alfonso Y., even conquered Naples. Castile, on the 
1456. other hand, enlarged itself on the south, and by success- 

ful wars against the Moors, gained possession of Cordova, Seville, and 
Cadiz. These contests had the greatest influence on the history and 
character of the Spanish nation. First, They produced a love of war 
and a chivalrous turn of mind, and were the occasion that the Spanish 
nation took delight in contests and arms, in tournaments and knightly 
exercises, and in romantic poetry and minstrelsy. Secondly, They 
preserved the zeal for religion, and were the foundation of that pre- 
dominance of the clergy which was always a characteristic of Spain. 
Thirdly, They aroused a feeling of liberty and self-reliance among the 
people, — hence the Spanish Estates, which assembled regularly in the 
Cortes, claimed and exercised privileges which were to be met with 
in no other monarchy. The Estates of Aragon not only possessed the 
right of legislating and of consenting to the levying of taxes, but the 
king was obliged to consult them in the choice of his council. Quar- 
rels between the Estates and the king were decided by an independent 
chief-justice (Justitia). 

§ 281. The chivalrous Peter III., the conqueror of Sicily (§ 240), 
is the best known of the Aragonian kings, and Alfonso X., the 
Alfonso X. Wise, of the Castilian. The latter occupied himself with 
a.d. 1252 — astronomy and astrology, with music and poetry, enlarged 
the university of Salamanca, encouraged the development 
of the national language, and had works prepared on history and 
jurisprudence ; but he was wanting in the practical wisdom of life. 
To gain the shadow of the imperial Roman throne, and to gratify his 
taste for magnificence and pleasure, he oppressed his people with 
taxes, and plunged his land into confusion by extravagance, and by 
Alfonso XI debasing the coinage. Alfonso XI. overcame the Moors 
a.d. 1324 — on the river Salado, and took the strong town, Algeciras, 
1340. ^ Andalusia. T defray the expenses of the war, the 

a.d. 134 . Estates introduced the tax alcavala, which was levied upon 
all moveable and immoveable property as often as it was sold or 
exchanged, and which proved extremely detrimental to trade and 
commerce. This impost has continued to exist in Spain ever since. 
Peter the Alfonso's son, Peter the Cruel, outraged his wives, his 
Cruel, a.d. brothers and relatives, the nobles and the people, so long, 
1350—1369. fasti a £ i en gth hi s half-brother, with the assistance of some 
French troops, overcame and killed him, and then assumed his place. 



1 88 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

Isabella ^ e niari> i a g e °f queen Isabella of Castile, with Ferdinand 

a.d. 1474— the Catholic of Aragon, led to the union of the two 
x£ i" ■ v kingdoms, and consequently to a new epoch for Spain, 
a.d. 1479— towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century. 
1516> § 282. Ferdinand and Isabella, directed by the coun- 

sels of the shrewd cardinal Ximenes, strove for a common object ; — 
they sought to diminish the power of the nobility and clergy, and 
exalt that of the crown. For this purpose, Ferdinand obtained from 
the pope the grand mastership of the three wealthy orders of Cas- 
tiliau knights, and the privilege of filliug up the Spanish bishoprics. 
He next deprived the nobility of the administration of justice, that he 
might transfer it to the royal courts, and established the armed Her- 
mandad (police), to preserve the peace of tbe land, and to abolish 
robbery and private warfare. But the most important means of 
raising the power of the throne was the court of inquisition, in which 
the king had the appointment of the grand-inquisitor and all the judges. 
This royal court of faith, provided with spiritual weapons, was not 
only the terror of heretics and secret Mohammedans and Jews, but 
held the nobility and clergy in awe, and imposed heavy chains upon 
the free activity of the mind. The slightest suspicion, the false testi- 
mony of an enemy, might lead to the frightful dungeons of the inqui- 
sition, wdiere the most dreadful tortures of the rack were employed 
to force a confession of guilt, and wiles, equivocations, and ensnaring 
questions were made use of to entrap the resolute. Numberless 
victims were given up to the flames in the midst of pomp and magni- 
ficence (auto de fe), or pined away their lives in mouldering dungeons, 
whilst the treasury of the state was enriched with their property. 
Never were the throne and altar united in a bond so dangerous to the 
liberties of the people, as in Spain since the establishment of the 
inquisition. 

§ 283. The banishment of the Moors is one of the most melan- 
choly phenomena in Spanish history. When the Moorish kingdom 
of Granada, after a war of ten years, fell before the arms of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella, the Mohammedans were allowed no alternative but 
to leave their country or embrace Christianity ; hereupon many of 
them quitted their native land, others, with inward repugnance, 
adopted the doctrines of the Gospel, but were driven, by the cruelty 
of the inquisition and the oppression of the government, to repeated 
rebellions, by which their condition was always rendered worse than 
before. But their lot Avas most deplorable under the fanatical Philip 
II. and his successor of the same name. A command was first given 
that they should renounce their language, their national dress, and 
their peculiar customs ; and as if even this tyrannical order were not 
sufficient to destroy the last traces of their Arabian origin and then 



ITALY. 189 

foreign faith, they were mercilessly driven away from the Spanish 
territory. 800,000 Moors, men and women, old men and children, 
left the land of their birth, their blooming fields, and the houses their 
own hands had built. The flourishing plains of the south soon became 
a desert, agriculture decayed, and trade stagnated ; prosperous villages 
were reduced to ruins, towns once animated by commerce became 
depopulated, poverty, dirt, and sloth, took possession of the once rich 
and happy country, the departed splendour of which is still attested 
by magnificent ruins. A similar fate attended the Jews ; priests and 
courtiers divided the possessions and treasures of the banished. 

The destruction of the privileges of the Estates and of the liberties 
of the people, were also consequences of this mischievous union 
between the crown and the altar. 

4. ITALY. 
a. UPPER ITALT. 

§ 284. In Upper Italy, the two republics of Venice and Genoa 
raised themselves by their trade and navigation, to a prosperity that 
recals the memory of the most flourishing period of ancient Greece. 
Venice directed her view to the Adriatic and JEgean seas, and sought 
to make conquests on their coasts for the purpose of obtaining suit- 
able havens, marts, and magazines ; as those in Dalmatia, Greece, the 
Archipelago, Constantinople, and many other places. This remark- 
able city, which had originated from the union of several islands, 
became rich and powerful by her oriental traffic. Magnificent 
churches (the cathedral of St. Mark), gorgeous palaces (that of the 
doge), splendid squares (the place of St. Mark), boldly constructed 
bridges (that of the Kialto), made Venice a wonder of the world. 
But magnificence, wealth, and pleasures, could not make amends for 
the want of freedom. The original democratic constitution was 
changed during the thirteenth and fourteenth century, into an oppres- 
sive hereditary aristocracy. An elected doge, with limited authority, 
stood at the head of the state ; but the whole power rested in the 
high council, to which only a limited number of noble families 
(nobili), whose names were written in the golden book, had admis- 
sion. For the purpose of preventing any alteration in the constitu- 
tion of the state, a council of ten persons were furnished with dicta- 
torial power, and provided with a state police of spies and informers, ' 
and a state inquisition with subterraneous dungeons, racks, and 
leaden roofs. Every motion was watched, every word listened to, 
every movement of the people observed. 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Venice attempted to estend 
her rule on the Italian continent, and obtained possession by the help 
of skilful generals, of Verona, Padua, Brescia, and many other cities 
and territories of Upper Italy. By this means, however, she came into 



190 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

hostile contact with other European states, and was not unfrequently 
threatened with destruction, particularly in the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, by the league of Cambray, in which, 
the emperor Maximilian, Louis XII. of France, Ferdi- 
nand the Catholic of Aragon, and pope Julius II., united together 
for the purpose of dividing the Venetian territory. The French were 
already threatening the wealthy city, when the Venetian council 
succeeded in dividing the league and gaining over the pope and 
Ferdinand. In this manner, Venice was saved and the French 
driven out of Italy. But the wounds which Venice received in her 
eastern possessions by the establishment of the Osman empire, and 
in her trade by the discovery of a sea passage to the East Indies, 
were incurable. Since then, the allegorical marriage of the doge with 
the Adriatic in the state vessel, the Bucentaur, has been a ceremony 
without a meaning. 

§ 285. Genoa was the proud rival of Venice. The mutual jealousy 
of the two republics respecting the trade with the East was the occa- 
sion of many wars and many bloody naval engagements, in which, 
however, Venice was generally the victor. Genoa's splendid marble 
palaces, her havens covered with a forest of masts, and her exchange, 
bore witness to her wealth. But quarrels between democrats and 
aristocrats, between Guelfs (Fieschi and Grimaldi) and Ghibellines 
(Spinola and Doria), weakened her internal strength. Incapable of 
governing herself, she sought for foreign rulers, till at length she fell 
alternately under the power of the French and Milanese. The excel- 
lent constitution which the naval hero, Andreas Doria, 
planned in the sixteenth century for his native city, after 
he had overthrown the French government there, and brought back 
the republican forms, restored the state to its outward independence, 
but by no means to its internal tranquillity. Twenty years later, the 
handsome, rich, and accomplished Fiesco attempted to 
deprive the house of Doria of the office of doge ; but 
the enterprize was frustrated by the unexpected death of the daring 
conspirator. 

§ 286. Milan came gradually under the government of the wealthy 
family of Visconti, who obtained the ducal title from the emperor, 
and conquered the greater part of Lombardy by the aid of condot- 
tieri and mercenary troops. When the male line of the Visconti 
became extinct in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
the Milanese transferred the sovereignty of their beau- 
tiful land, which was aimed at both by the French and Spaniards, 
to Francisco Sforza, the most able of these condottieri. 

A.D. 1500. ml „ ,, , _ 

I he conquest of the country by Louis XII. of France, 
was facilitated by quarrels in Sforza' s family. Louis carried away 
the duke (Louis Moro) prisoner, and suffered him to pine for ten 



ITALY. 191 

years in a subterranean dungeon. The French were indeed driven 
out of Italy a few years later, and the son of the captive Moro raised 
to the dukedom of Milan ; but the first warlike action of the chivalrous 
Francis I. was the "battle of giants" of Marignano, in 
which the duke and his Swiss were defeated, and Milan 
again joined to the French kingdom. Ten years afterwards, the duke- 
dom fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who remained in possession 
of it for nearly two hundred years. 

§ 287. The western states of Upper Italy fell, for the most part, 
under the power of the counts of Savoy, who, by prudence, good for- 
tune, and force of arms, gradually enlarged their originally narrow 
territory to a dukedom, which extended northward over the south of 
Switzerland to Jura (Geneva, Yaud, Valois), and included on the 
south, Piedmont, with Turin, the G-rafschaft of Nice, and other 
territories. But when the warlike confederates on the north, and 
on the west, France, which was now united into a powerful king- 
dom, became the neighbours of Savoy's frontiers, its circumference 
began gradually to lessen. The Valois was lost in the Burgundian 
war (§ 293), Geneva freed itself during the contests of the refor- 
mation, and in the wars which Francis I. carried on with Charles V., 
for the possession of Milan, duke Charles III. of Savoy, the ally 
of the latter, lost the greater part of his hereditary estates, which 
his son again received, with some loss, at the peace of 
Cambresis. But his successors, by taking advantage of 
favourable opportunities, amply repaid themselves for their losses by 
conquests in other quarters (Sardinia, Genoa), and at length obtained 
possession of the kingly power. 

i. MIDDLE AND LOWER ITALY. 

§ 288. The trading town of Pisa was the first to flourish in Tus- 
cany. "When this city had fallen before the army of the Genoese, 
Florence raised itself above the other towns, and at length reduced 
Pisa itself to subjection. Florence was at first governed by the 
nobility; but when this class had been weakened by the party 
contentions of the Guelfs (Black) and GhibeUines (White), the 
government was obtained by the people, who were divided in guilds, 
and who consisted, for the most part, of masters of manufactories and 
workers in wool. But scarcely was a complete democracy established 
in Florence, when a new quarrel for supremacy sprung up between 
the rich merchants and the poorer artisans, the result of which was, 
that the state was governed alternately by a money aristocracy and 
by the democratic guilds. Love of freedom, patriotism, and refinement 
were developed in the midst of these contests, so that Florence might 
be compared to the ancient Athens. At length, the wealthy family of 
the Medici succeeded in so completely winning to themselves the 



192 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

affections of the poor by their kindness and benevolence, and those of 
Cosmo de the illustrious by their friendly affability, that Cosmo de 
Medici, a.d. Medici, a man of lofty mind and patriotic spirit, without 
assuming either rank or title, governed the Florentine 
state with almost unlimited power, and rendered it flourishing and 
powerful by successful wars abroad, and by encouragement of the 
arts and sciences at home. To him belongs by right the surname of 
Tather of his country. 
T ., S 289. Cosmo's grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, trod 

Lorenzo the . 

Magnificent, in the path of his ancestors, and rendered Florence the seat 

1472—1492. f every art and science, and a seminary for all Europe. 
His court was ornamented with artists, poets, and writers ; learned 
men from Byzantium, who were flying from the sword of the Turks, 
taught the Greek language and literature in Florence. Under his 
rule, the arts of sculpture, painting, and music began to unfold their 
choicest blossoms. After Lorenzo's death, the animated discourses 
of the Dominican, Savanarola, induced the Florentines to drive out 
the Medici, and to restore the democratic republic. But when the 
pope excommunicated the bold "prophet of Florence" and the 
priests, against whose wealth and luxurious lives his zeal had been 
chiefly directed, rose against him, his enemies succeeded in effecting 
his overthrow ; upon which, he was condemned to be burnt as a dis- 
turber of the Church and a corrupter of the people. The Medici 

soon returned : and when a democratic spirit, after some 
a.d. 1498. . ' r ' 

time, again awoke, and a second banishment followed, the 

emperor, Charles V., having an understanding with the Medician 

pope, Clement VIL, inarched upon Florence, compelled it to surrender 

, ro „ after a close siege, and placed the cruel Alexander de' 
a.d. 1530. o ' i 

Medici as duke over the humbled republic. Alexander 
after many years' tyranny was killed by the people, but the govern- 
ment, nevertheless, remained in the hands of the Medici. Among 
the many artists and writers that lived about this time in Florence, 

Michael Angelo, who was equally distinguished as an ar- 
Angelo, a.d. chitect, sculptor, and painter ; and the clever statesman, 
1474-1563. Macchiavelli, author of " The Prince," the "History of 
a.d. 1527. ' Florence," and " Conversations on Titus Livius," are the 

most distinguished names. 
§ 290. During the residence of the popes in Avignon (§ 255), 
violence and lawlessness, occasioned by the bloody family quarrels of 
the Colonna and Orsini, had reigned in the ecclesiastical state of 
Borne. This inspired Cola di Bienzi, a man filled with enthusiasm 
for ancient Borne, with the project of bringing back peace and the 
ancient greatness to the state by the restoration of the republican 
constitution. His fiery eloquence transported the Romans. They 
a.d. 1347. established a new republican Borne, raised the popular 



ITALY. 193 

orator to the office of tribune, and drove the nobles from their walls. 
But Kienzi's splendid part was soon played out. Pride and vanity 
blinded him ; oppressive taxes deprived him of the favour of the peo- 
ple ; so that his enemies succeeded in procuring his overthrow, and 
compelled him to fly. He returned, indeed, a few years after, but it 
.__. was only to meet with his death in a popular commotion. 

After arranging the division in the Church (§ 263), a few 
distinguished popes made an attempt to heal the wounds of the state 
and the Church. Among these, may be particularly mentioned 
a.d. 1450— Nicholas V., the founder of the "Vatican library, and Pius 
1460. II. (iEneas Silvius, § 266), known as a clever and versa- 

tile writer, — both of them patrons of cultivation and science. On 
the other hand, Alexander VI. (Borgia) was the scandal of all Chris- 
tendom by his abandoned life, and his family (Caesar and Lucretia 
Borgia in particular) were guilty of frightful crimes. Alexander's 

successor, Julius II., possessed a magnanimous disposition, 

but his passion for war suited ill with his spiritual office. 
He marched into the field himself, and enlarged the possessions of 
the Church by the addition of Bologna, Ancona, Perrara, and other 
towns and territories. Leo X., the highly accomplished son of Lo- 
renzo de' Medici, united in the Vatican all the splendour of art and 
refinement as an inheritance of his house. But in studying the produc- 
tions of Greek and Soman paganism, he lost sight of the doctrine of 
the Church and of reverence for the Gospel; yet he taxed the religious 
faith of the people by the sale of indulgences, that he might be able to 
Raphael, support the expense of building the magnificent church of 
a.d. 1483— St. Peter, and to reward artists with a liberal hand. The 

"divine" painter, Eaphael, was the ornament of his 

court. 

In Perrara, during the fifteenth century, reigned the younger 

branch of the house of Este, which was not less distinguished for 

refinement and encouragement of the arts and sciences than the 

Medici. Ariosto, the writer of " Orlando Purioso," and Torquato 

Tasso, the poet of " Jerusalem Delivered," were the ornaments of the 

ducal court of Perrara. 

§ 291. The descendants of Charles of Anjou reigned in Naples, 

which, since the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen (§ 239, 240), had 

become a papal fief. The Guelfic party found in them as zealous 

defenders, as the Ghibelline in the kings of Sicily of the princely 

Johanna I nouse °f Aragon. Two wicked queens, Johanna I. and 

a.d. 1343— Johanna II., filled the kingdom with acts of cruelty, war, 

I 3 ? 2 ' TT and confusion. The latter, before her childless departure, 
Johanna II., ' ■ ... 

a.d. 1414— named, first, an Aragoman, and afterwards a 1 rench prmce 

1435. f or h er h^ an( j by this means produced two parties, a 

Prench and an Aragonian, that contended till the end of the fifteenth 



19i TOE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

century, with great bitterness and various success, for the possession 
of Naples, till Frederick the Catholic of Aragon at length 
gained possession of it by craft and the success of his 
arms, and again united it with Sicily. The kingdom of Naples and 
Sicily remained subject to the Spanish sceptre for two hundred years, 
and was governed by a vice-king. Increase of taxatiou, and the 
destruction of the privileges of the Estates, gradually produced poverty 
and loss of freedom. 

5. THE JTEAV BTJBGUNDIAN TERB.TTOET. 

§ 292. Philip the Bold had received the dukedom of Burgundy 
Philip the from his father, king John of Prance, in fief. He united 
Bold, a.d. to this, by inheritance and marriage, the Burgundian 
1363—1404. ;p re ig ra ft sc h a ft (Pranche Comte), formerly an appanage 
of the German empire, and the rich lands of Planders, together with 
j , Artois, Mechlin, Antwerp, and some other towns. His 

Poeur, a.d. son, John sans Poeur, and his grandson, Phdip the Good, 
PKT~rti* 19 " ex t enaea their possessions still farther over the other 
Good, a.d. states of the Netherlands, and established a kingdom that 
1419—1467. [ n civdization, industry, and prosperity, could vie with 
Italy. Philip the Good was one of the most powerful and richest 
princes of his time, and his Netherland chivalry were distinguished 
by their splendour, adroitness, and polished manners. The wealthy 
trading and manufacturing towns of Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, 
Bruges, Louvain, &c, possessed great privdeges and liberties, and a 
warlike mditia. 

§ 293. Phdip' s son, Charles the Bold, enlarged the dukedom, and 
Ch 1 s the rjuse d the splendour of the chivalrous court to the highest 
Bold, a.d. point. He was a man of vigour, courage, and warlike 
1467—1477- spirit; but ambition and violent passions rendei'ed him 
rash, insolent, and obstinate. His efforts were directed to the en- 
largement of his dukedom into a Gallo-Burgundian kingdom, with 
the Bhine for its eastern boundary. But his undertakings were 
frustrated by the crafty and faithless Louis XL of Prance. Por when 
Charles the Bold threatened the duke of Lorraine (whose lands and 
chief city, Nancy, he was longing for) with war, Louis brought about 
an alliance between Lorraine and the Swiss. Hereupon, Charles, 
with a stately and splendidly equipped army, marched across Jura 
against the Swiss, but suffered such a defeat in the battle 
A ' D ' ' of Granson, that the survivors were dispersed in dis- 
orderly flight ; and the admirable artillery, together with a magnificent 
camp filled with costly stuffs, gold, silver, and precious stones, fell 
into the bauds of an enemy who did not know their value. Maddened 
by this disgrace, Charles, a few months afterwards, marched with a 
fresh army against the confederates. But the battle of Murten ended 



SCANDINAVIA. 195 

in the same way : the victors were again enriched with an enormous 
booty ; Berne wrested the Valais from the royal house of Savoy, 
which was in alliance with Burgundy, and the duke of Lorraine again 
gained possession of his lands, which had been seized upon by Charles. 
Misfortune confused the mind of the Burgundian duke : blind with 
rage, and meditating nothing but vengeance, he rejected every pro- 
posal of accommodation, and marched for the third time against the 
enemy, who were prepared for the encounter. But in January, 1477, 
his army suffered a thud frightful overthrow in the frozen fields 
before Nancy, partly by the swords of the brave Swiss, Alsacians, and 
Lorrainers, and partly by the treachery of his Italian condottieri. 
Charles himself was killed in a frozen morass during the flight. 

§ 294. After the death of Charles, Louis XL seized upon the 
proper dukedom of Burgundy (Burgogne), as a vacant fief of the 
French crown, and attempted to get possession of the other lands. 
At this juncture, Charles's daughter, Maria, was married to the 
chivalrous Maximilian of Austria, who overcame the 
French, and compelled them to relinqiiish their purpose. 
Maria died shortly afterwards by a fall from her horse, whilst hawk- 
ing. The French king again renewed his treacherous intrigues for 
the purpose of exciting the towns of the Netherlands against Maxi- 
milian, who had been appointed guardian of his infant son, Philip of 
Burgundy. Ghent fell off, the guilds of Bruges kept him for some 
time a prisoner, Brabant wavered ; but nevertheless, Maximilian, by 
his courage and conduct, brought the whole of the Netherlands to 
acknowledge his rights of guardianship. Philip's son, Charles (V.), 
who was born to him by the Spanish Johanna, and who was born in 
the beginning of the century at Ghent, inherited all the 
lands of his parents and grand-parents. Yet his heart 
was with the rich, cultivated, and industrious Netherlands, which he 
had united into a whole by the acquisition of Utrecht, Gueldres, and 
some other towns, and added to the German empire, under the title 
of the Burgundian Circle. 

6. SCANDINAVIA. 

§ 295. After the daring sea expeditions and wanderings of the 
Normans and Danes (§ 204, 206) had ceased, an enterprising prince 
was here and there successful in raising himself above the other heads 
of tribes (fylken kings), and in founding a kingdom by uniting several 
tribes (fylken) together. This was effected in Norway by Harald 
Pairhair ; in Denmark, by Gorm the Old ; and in Sweden 
by the Tnglians. But it was with reluctance that the 
a.d. 900. war liie e Norman chiefs bowed beneath the authority of a 
supreme king, and many of the discontented renewed the expeditions 
by sea, and sought for a new home abroad. Thus, Bollo (Robert) in 

o 2 



196 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

Normandy (§ 205). The contests of the kings with the chiefs of the 
tribes lasted for many centuries, and impeded the rapid and effectual 
introduction of Christianity into the Scandinavian kingdoms. For 
although the Gospel had been preached in the three kingdoms as 
early as the ninth century, by Ansgar, the " apostle of the north," 
and single kings, as Harald Bluetooth in Denmark, and Olaf Skot- 
konung in Sweden, had been converted to it as early as the tenth 
century, yet the pagan worship of Odin still wrestled with Christianity 
for the mastership, for more than a hundred years. In Denmark, 
Harald' s grandson, Canute the Great (§ 207), and in 
Norway, Olaf the Saint, gave the victory to the doctrine 
of a crucified Saviour ; but this did not take place in Sweden till the 
middle of the twelfth century, in the reign of Erick the Pious, and 
not till even later than this among the half-savage Pins. Christianity 
produced the most beneficial effects in the Scandinavian kingdoms. 
The Benedictine monks laid, not only the germ of spiritual develop- 
ment, but they also improved the manner of living, and made the 
people acquainted with the advantages of civilization. They intro- 
duced the art of writing, and banished the rude and defective Runic 
characters by the Latin alphabet ; they encouraged agriculture and 
planted new kinds of corn; they built mills, opened mines, and 
accustomed the warlike people to the arts of peace, to trade and 
agriculture. Christianity diminished the vast gulf that had hitherto 
existed between freemen and slaves, by awakening in every breast the 
sentiments of the dignity of human nature, and the equality of all 
men in the sight of God. In a word, the clergy obtained great wealth, 
privileges, and possessions, so that they could place themselves on 
terms of equality by the side of the free holders of land. But the 
peasant class, on the other hand, remained in a state of dependence, 
and the towns arrived at neither prosperity nor importance. 

§ 296. Denmark, to which Norway was united, acquired a great 

-r.7 ,. tt extent in the eleventh and twelfth centurv, under a few 

Waldemar II., J 

a.d. 1202— warlike kings. Waldemar II. the Conqueror, prosecuted 

1241 - the conquests of his father and grandfather on the coasts 

of the East sea with such success, that he at last united all the Slavish 
lands on the south and east coasts of the Baltic, from Holstein to 
Esthonia, — Lauenburg, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, a part of Prussia, 
the coast land of Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia, with his other 
possessions, and could call himself king of the Danes and Slaves, and 
lord of Nordalbingia (Sleswick-IIolstein) . But his severity engen- 
dered hate and bitterness ; so that when, whilst engaged in the chase, 
he fell into the power of count Henry of Schwerin, whom he had 
deeply injured, and was kept prisoner by him for more 
than two years in the strong castle of Danneberg ; the 
princes who were his vassals revolted from him and maintained their 



SCANDINAVIA. 197 

independence with the sword ; so that in a short time the proud fabric 
of Waldeniar fell to the ground. Hamburg and Lubeck became free 
imperial towns ; the peasant republic of the Ditanarsens regained their 
independence, and the German provinces returned to the government 
of the emperor. After Waldeniar II. 's death there occurred a time 
of internal confusion, which was taken advantage of by the aristo- 
cracy of nobles to increase their privileges. In addition to their free- 
Waldemar ^ om & om taxes, the holders of land now obtained a juris- 
III., a.d. diction peculiar to themselves. "Waldeniar III. again 
1340 1375. governed with a firm hand : his daughter, Margareta, 

united the three Scandinavian kingdoms under one sceptre 

by the Union of Calmar. 
§ 297. In Sweden also, the power of the kings had been much 
diminished, and that of the chivalrous nobility increased, by the pro- 
tracted contests for the crown. Even the powerful family of the 
Eolkungs, which had ascended the throne about the middle of the 
thirteenth century, succumbed in a few generations to the strokes of 
fate which smote all the princely houses of Sweden. Of the seven 
kings of this royal house, five were dethroned, and died either in 
prison or in banishment. After the deposition of the last Folkung, 

Magnus II., the Swedish throne descended upon his 

a d 1363 

sister's son, Albert of Mecklenburg, who, however, after 
a few years, was conquered and robbed of his kingdom by the Danish 

Margareta ; whereupon Sweden concluded the Union of 

Calmar with Denmark. 
This Union of Calmar proved a blessing to neither of the three 
kingdoms. In Denmark and Norway, under the weak kings who 
succeeded Margareta, the power of the state fell more and more into 
the hands of the rich nobles, whilst Sweden was treated and governed 
by the Danish kings almost as though it were a conquered country. 
Dissension soon loosened the bonds of the Union of Calmar, without, 
however, tearing them completely asunder. The Hanseates, who 
sought to prevent a firm union of the three kingdoms by every 
possible method, encouraged these divisions from interested motives. 
Christian I -^e house of Oldenburg assumed the government of Den- 
a.d. 1448 — mark, in the person of Christian I. Sweden also, at the 
if ' o f same time, obtained a sagacious and valiant ruler in Steno 
a.d. 1471— Sture. This prince curbed the insolence of the nobles, 
1504. elevated the peasant and burgher classes, founded the 

university of Upsala, and invited men of learning and printers from 
foreign lands into the country. Steno Sture governed the kingdom 
with almost absolute power ; but when his second successor, Steno 
Sture the younger, quarrelled with the archbishop of Upsala, the 
tyrannical Christian II. succeeded, by the aid of the latter, in esta- 
blishing anew the supremacy of Denmark over Sweden. Steno Sture 



198 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

was overcome in the field and mortally wounded, where- 
upon Christian II. commanded ninety -four of the most 
influential and powerful nobles to be beheaded in Stockholm. But 
this cruelty, after a few years, dissolved for ever the bonds between 
Denmark and Sweden. 



A.D. 973. 



7. KUNGAEY. 

§ 29S. Shortly after Otto's victory on the Lechfeld 
(§ 210) had put an end to the incursions of the Hun- 
garians, Greisa became a convert to Christianity, and ordered the 
doctrines of the Grospel to be taught to his own people by GTerman 
missionaries. What he began was brought to a conclusion by his 
Stephen the son ' Stephen ^ ne Pious, who received the kingly dignity 
Pious, from the pope. He provided for the diffusion of Chris- 

a.d. 1000. tianity, to which the Magyars, partly from inherent bar- 
barism, and partly from dislike of the Germans, were averse, by 
founding monasteries, and calling the Benedictine monks into the 
country ; he reduced the state to order by dividing the kingdom into 
comitates (shires), and by entrusting the management of the affairs 
of the army, the government, and the administration of justice, to 
intendants appointed by himself; he became a legislator, inasmuch 
as he accustomed his subjects to civil order, agriculture, and industry. 
But the warlike character of the Magyars, and their repugnance to 
the Christian worship of the West, which brought servitude, socage 
duties, and the troublesome labours of agriculture with it, in place of 
the old wild freedom, occasioned desolating wars and fresh confusion 
after the death of Stephen. 

Geisa II., Under Greisa II. troops of Flemish and Low-German 

a.d. 1150. settlers established themselves in Transylvania, who, 
under the name of Saxons, retain to this day the manners, customs, 
and institutions of their fatherland. By patience and industry they 
have converted the land from a desert into a blooming region, with 
rich towns and prosperous villages, and have vigorously defended 
their liberties against all attacks. In the thirteenth century, the 
Hungarian nobles (magnates) wrested a charter (" the golden privi- 
lege ") from the king, Andreas II., which secured import- 
ant privileges to the clergy and nobility, and, like the 
Magna Charta of England (§ 276), formed the foundation of the free 
constitution of Hungary. An infringement of the " golden privilege " 
by the king, justified the nobles in an armed opposition. 

§ 299. When the royal house of Arpad was extinguished by the 
death of Andreas III., Hungary became an elective kingdom. Here- 
in is th upon, Louis the Great of the royal Neapolitan house of 
Great, a.d. Anjou, was raised to the throne. Under this distin- 
1342—1348. g U j snec i king, Hungary reached the highest point of its 



POLAND. 199 

external power and domestic prosperity. He obtained the crown of 
Poland, extended the frontiers of Hungary to the Lower Danube, 
and made the Venetians his tributaries. The hills around Tokay 
were planted with vines, the administration of justice was improved, 
the citizens and peasants were secured against oppression and arbi- 
trary treatment ; schools for education were established. After the 
death of Louis, who conducted many wars in Italy, long and violent 
contests were carried on for the throne, at the termination of which, 
the German emperor, Sigismund, united the Hungarian crown with 
his others, and arranged the representation of the kingdom by means 
of Estates. Under the weak successors of his daughter, Hungary 
would have fallen a prey to the Osman Turks, had not the heroic 
Huniades saved the land by his valour and military skill. The nation, 
out of gratitude, conferred the throne of Hungary upon his energetic 
Matthias Cor son ' Matthias Corvinus, who occupied it for thirty-two 
vinus, a.d. years, as the worthy successor of Stephen the Pious and 
1458 1490. Louis the Great. Matthias shone in the arts of peace as 
well as in those of war. He held the power of the Osmans in check, 
enlarged his territories towards Austria and Germany, and improved 
the affairs of the army. A new university was founded by him in 
Ofen (Buda), a library established, and the civilization of the people 
promoted by the introduction from all quarters of men of learning 
and artists, printers and architects, gardeners, economists (persons 
skilled in agriculture), and artificers. These advantages were again 
lost under his successors. The Turks carried their victorious arms 
over Belgrade, the- western acquisitions were surrendered by treaties 
of peace ; at the same time, the royal power was so curtailed, that 
henceforth, not only the levying of taxes, but even war and peace 
were dependent upon the National Convent, and at length, the mag- 
nates took possession of the whole authority for themselves. The fall 
of Louis II. at Mohacs (§ 307) occasioned a contest for 
the crown, the result of which was, that the country was 
divided into two halves : Transylvania and East Hungary as far as 
the Theiss, which was under the dominion of the Turks ; and West 
Hungary, which Eerdinand of Austria incorporated for some time with 
his other dominions, till the whole fell into the hands of his successors. 

8. POLAND. 

§ 300. The vast plains of the Vistula and the lands on the Oder 
and the "Wartha were inhabited by Slavonic tribes, who were some- 
times governed by a single chief, and sometimes divided into 
several principalities. Erom the time of the conversion of duke 
Miesco (Mieceslav) to Christianity by German missionaries, Po- 
land was looked upon as a fief of the German empire, but was 
very slightly connected with it, and in the time of Frederick II. 



200 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

rendered itself entirely independent. The kingdom of Poland was 
torn and weakened by many divisions, so that in the twelfth century, 
the Silesian principality on the Oder was entirely dissevered from it, 
Vladislaus anc ^ Im ited with Germany. Poland first rose to import- 
IV., a.d. ance in the fourteenth century, when Vladislaus IV. 
permanently united the principalities on the Wartha 
(Posen, &c), as Great Poland, with the lands on the Vistula 
(Little Poland) ; had himself crowned in Cracow, and transmitted 
Casimirthe ^ e title of king to his posterity. His son, Casimir 
Great, a.d. the Great, who extended his domains over Gallicia and 
1^70. j£ e( j Russia, and built a university in Cracow, also 
deserved well of Poland by his merits as a legislator. But despite 
Ins efforts to diminish the power of the nobility and to increase 
that of the cities, no free burgher class could flourish in a nation so 
addicted to war and so deficient in civilization. The dominion that 
rested on the sword still remained with the nobles, — money, retail 
traffic, and trade, with the Jews ; the peasant led a wretched life as 
a serf, and won but a miserable support from the fertile corn-fields of 
the Vistula. 

§ 301. "With Casimir, the male line of the Piasti became extinct, 
whereupon, the Poles transferred the crown to his sister's son, Louis 
Louis the the Great of Hungary. Prom this time forth, Poland 
Great, a.d. became an elective kingdom, the nation, nevertheless, ad- 
The Jagel- ' hered for two hundred years to the race of the Jagellons, 
Ions, a.d. which, however, was obliged to grant the nobles an immunity 
— °' ' from taxes and other great privileges in return for its 
election. Under the first king of this race, Jagello (Vladislaus), Li- 
thuania was added to the Polish empire, after Christianity had been 
established and the idols overthrown there. The woollen garments 
that were distributed during baptism attracted thousands of half- willing 
Casi ' TV Lets to the new faith. Jagello' s second successor, Casimir 
a.d. 1447— I V"-> induced the German orders to relinquish Culm, Elbing, 
* ! ' 2, and Marienwerder, and to recognize the suzerainship of Po- 

land, in doing which, he was obliged to purchase by fresh concessions 
the aid of the nobles, who, in the Polish Diet, alone possessed the privi- 
lege of consenting to the raising of taxes and the levying of troops. 
That every noble might not always be obliged to appear personally at 
the Diet, it was arranged that a certain number of authorized deputies 
should be sent from all the Voiwodeschafts, to whom the king added 
besides a few representatives of the clergy and of the higher officials. 
Without the consent of this assembly, to which the burgher class 
was not admitted, the king could adopt no measure, either of taxation 
or legislation, nor take any important step in the government or in 
the conduct of war. The nobles were regarded as the only true 
citizens of the state; and the principle that they were all exactly on 



THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. 20 1 

an equality, raised their power in the same proportion that frequent 
changes of the throne and wars of succession depressed that of the 
king. 

In the century of the Reformation, king Sigmund established the 
suzerainship of Poland over the dukedom of Prussia, which had been 
recently founded by the grand-master of the German order, Albert 
of Brandenburg, who was a convert to Lutheranism, and enfeoffed 
Gotthard Keltler, chief commander of the order of the sword, who 
had also gone over to Protestantism, with Courland : but owing to 
the selfishness of the nobles and internal dissensions, the Polish king- 
dom was unable, for a permanency, to afford any sufficient opposition 
to the advance of the Turks and Russians. 

9. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. 

§ 302. When the great-grandson of the Varangian chief, Ruric 
Vladimir the (§ 206), Vladimir the Great, who held his residence in 
Great, a.d. Kiow, introduced the Greek Christian church into his 

dominions, the latter extended from the Dnieper to the 
lake of Lodoga and to the banks of the Dvina. But they suffered so 
much in their union and strength under his successors, by divisions 
among heirs and internal wars, that the Lithuanians, Poles, and 
brethren of the sword, &c, in the West, gained possession of large 

portions of territory, and at length the Moguls conquered 

all the land from the Dnieper to the Vistula, and made 
Russia tributary. The great khan of the Golden Horde of Kaptschak, 
whose residence and fixed quarters were on the east bank of the 
Volga, exacted, during two hundred years, an oppressive tribute from 
the Russian princes and their subjects. It was not until the power of 
the Golden Horde had been broken by dissension, that the chief 
prince, Ivan Vasilyevitsch the Great of Moscow, succeeded in freeing 
Ivan Vasily- bis kingdom from tribute, and in extending it in all direc- 
evitsch, a.d. tions by successful wars. The rich city of Novogorod, 

which belonged to the Hanseatic confederation, and which 
had possessed, for centuries, a republican constitution, and had known 
how to defend its liberties by a stout militia, was subjected and 
robbed of its privileges, and a number of its chief citizens were re- 
moved to other towns. Ivan was not only a conqueror but a legis- 
lator and politician, although in mind and manners he remained a 
rude and cruel barbarian. He adopted measures respecting the suc- 
cession of the throne, to the end that the kingdom might not be 
farther divided ; and he invited masons and mechanics from Germany 
and Italy, to plant the seeds of civilization among his barbarous peo- 
ple. He built the Kremlin (citadel) for the defence of his chief city, 
Moscow. 

Since the destruction of Constantinople by the Turks, the Russian 



202 THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

metropolitan (afterwards called Patriarch) had been elected by the 
native bishops, and thus the independence of the church maintained. 
t„™ v«;i™ Ivan's grandson, Ivan Vasilyevitsch, who first assumed 
vitsch II., the title of Tzar or ruler of all the Eussians, conquered 
|;°- 1533 ~ Kasan and Astracan, extended his kingdom to the Cau- 
casus, and made preparations for the discovery and sub- 
jection of Siberia. He laid the foundation of a standing army by 
the establishment of the brigade of arquebusiers (Strelitzes). The 
a.d. 1598. male line of Euric became extinct with Ivan's son, Eeodor. 

10 MOGULS AND TUBES. 

Zengis-Chan, § 303. In the beginning of the 13th century, Zengis- 
a.d. 1227. Chan (Temudschin), the chief of a warlike nomadic horde, 
marched forth to conquest from the elevated plains of Middle Asia. 
He scaled the Chinese wall and subdued the "celestial empire." 
Neither Hindostan nor the vast empire of the Carisimans on the 
Caspian sea and in Persia coidd withstand the savage strength of this 
advancing pastoral tribe. Bochara, Samarcand, and Balch, with all 
their treasures of art and science, perished in the flames. Zengis- 
Chan' s sons and grandsons pursued his conquests. Batu subdued 
the lands to the north of the Black Sea, made Russia tributary, burnt 
Cracow, and filled Poland and Hungary with slaughter and desola- 
tion. At length, the Moguls (who are also called Tatars) crossed 
the Oder ; Breslau was reduced to ashes, duke Henry of Lower 
Silesia fell, with the flower of his Christian warriors, on the field of 
battle near Leignitz, beneath the blows of the pagan nomads ; the 
people took refuge hi the mountains ; the whole West trembled ; the 
pope and the emperor, engaged in a furious quarrel (§ 236), did 
nothing towards aiding Christendom. Happily the enemy proceeded 
no farther. The bravery of the European warriors and the strength 
of their castles scared them away. They turned back from a land 
where there were no riches to attract them, and carried their arms 
against the luxurious khalifate of Bagdad, for which they prepared a 
bloody end. After the last khalif, Avith 200,000 Moslems, had fallen, 
and the ancient seat of the empire of the Abassides had been plundered 
for forty days, the Tatars pressed forwards upon Syria, where they 
destroyed the magnificent Haleb (Aleppo) and Damascus, and tram- 
pled the Christian and Arabian culture under the hoofs of their 
horses. In a few generations, the empire of the Moguls separated 
into a number of independent states. But the Eussians on the east 
of the Volga still bore for more than two centuries the yoke of the 
" Golden Horde," and Hungary and Poland recovered but slowly 
from their devastations. 

§ 304. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Osmans, 
pressed upon by the Moguls, left the region they had hitherto occu- 



MOGULS AND TURKS. 203 

pied, on the east coast of the Caspian sea, and descended upon Asia 
Minor. They were a warlike, nomadic race, professing the Moham- 
medan religion, and incited "by their priests (dervishes) to make war 
upon the Christians. Osman marched into Bithynia, 
chose Prusa (Bursa) for the seat of his empire, and 
maintained his conquests against the indolent Greeks and their 
Western mercenaries. His successors improved their army hy form- 
ing the strongest and handsomest youths, whom they selected from 
their Christian captives, into an effective infantry (janissaries), by 
Murad I. means of a military education. After Murad I. had 
a.d. 1361 — reduced the whole of Asia Minor under his yoke, he 
passed into Europe, and subjected, in a few campaigns, 
the whole country between the Hellespont and the Hoemus. Adrian- 
ople was taken, embellished with splendid mosques, and selected for 
the seat of Murad's government. His son, the energetic but cruel 
Bajazet, continued the victorious course of his predecessor with such 
Bajazet, a.d. success, that he was called the "lightning." He con- 
1389—1403. quered Macedonia and Thessaly, penetrated through 
Thermopylae into the desolated Greece and Peloponnesus, took 
Argos by storm, and allowed his swift horsemen to wander to the 
southernmost point of the ancient Laconia. At length, the West 
armed itself against this terrible enemy. Sigismund of Hungary, 
John of Burgundy, the flower of the French chivalry, and many 
German and Bohemian nobles, together more than 100,000 strong, 
marched to the Lower Danube. But in the bloody battle of Nicopoli 
the Christians, despite their valour, suffered a great defeat. Many 
counts and knights fell into the hands of the Turks, and only 
obtained their liberty by a heavy ransom. 10,000 prisoners of inferior 
rank were put to death by the order of Bajazet. 

§ 305. The victorious course of this mighty prince was checked by 
an enemy who trod a more vast and bloodier path than himself. This 
enemy was the Mogul ruler, Timur the Lame (Tamerlane), a descend- 
ant of Zengis-Chan, whose dilapidated kingdom he determined to 
restore. He left Samarcand, the charmingly situated seat of his 
empire, at the head of his warlike pastoral tribes, for the purpose of 
subjecting every nation between the wall of China and the Mediter- 
ranean, by the edge of the sword. After he had marched trium- 
phantly through India and Persia, and destroyed Bagdad and 
Damascus, he filled Asia Minor with desolation and terror. Smoke, 
ruins, and hills of slain marked his victorious path. At this point 
Bajazet relinquished the siege of Constantinople, and marched against 
the conqueror of the world. A fearful battle was fought 
near Angora (Ancyra), which, despite the valour and 
conduct of the Turks, terminated to the advantage of the Moguls. 



201< THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 

Bajazet was taken prisoner, and died the following year of grief. 
Timour's empire fell to pieces as rapidly as it had been formed. 
Murad II., § ^06. Bajazet's grandson, Murad II., restored the 

a.d. 1421— shattered Ottoman kingdom to its ancient strength and 
former compass in Asia and Europe. He reduced the 
Byzantine empire to the strong chief city and a few neighbouring 
places, and made it tributary. At this juncture John VII. (Palseo- 
logus), determined to gain the aid of the "West, by uniting the 
Eastern church with the Roman. With this object, he proceeded to 
Italy, accompanied by the patriarch and a few bishops, where, after a 
long and vehement dispute upon certain religious and ecclesiastical 
questions, an ambiguous union was effected, which, however, was 
rejected by the zealous confessors of both churches, and the division 
made greater than before. Nevertheless, the composition was 
attended with this result, that the pope, by his legate, Julian, united 
the Christian princes in a campaign against the Turks, and in the 
meanwhile attempted to persuade the Hungarians and Poles to an 
attack upon the Osman empire. Ladislaus, king of Hungary and 
Poland, and the heroic Huniades of Transylvania, crossed the 
Danube, but were totally defeated in the bloody battle of 
"Warna. The young king was one of the slain ; his head 
was carried about on a spear; the legate, Julian, was overtaken by 
death during the flight. 

§ 307. The last hour of the Byzantine empire was approaching, 
when, upon the death of Murad II., his energetic but blood-thirsty 
Mohammed S0U ' Mohammed II., became sultan of the Osmans. 
II., a.d. Resolved upon making Constantinople the seat of his 
government, he advanced to the siege of the city, and 
harassed it for fifty days by repeated assaults, to such a degree, that, 
despite a gallant defence, it could hold out no longer. "When the 
walls were scaled, the last emperor, Constantine, who still possessed 
some feeling for the old Roman greatness — for freedom, for religion, 
and for his country, — joined in the combat, and fell bravely fighting on 
the walls of his capital. The ancient seat of Byzantine magnificence 
became the residence of the sultan. The church of St. Sophia was 
turned into a mosque, and the half-moon of Islam was planted on 
the ruins of Christian civilization. Many learned men fled in terror 
to the West, and were instrumental in diffusing the Greek language 
and literature. The fall of Constantinople was followed by the con- 
quest of Greece and the Morea (Peloponnesus), and the subjection 
of the countries on the Danube ; it was only in the mountainous 
regions of Albania and Epirus, that the warlike hero, Alexander 
Castriota (Scanderberg), maintained an independent 
authority till his death, whilst the independence of 



MOGULS AND TURKS. 205 

Soliman the Hungary was secured by the victory of Huniades at 
^nfS- Bel g rade - But under Soliman the Magnificent, who 
1526. wrested the island of Rhodes (§ 227) from the knights 

of St. John after a most gallant resistance, the half of Hungary, 
together with Buda, fell, after the terrible battle of Mohacs, into the 

hands of the Ottomans, who now extended their ravages 
a.d. 1529 . 

to the walls of Vienna, and alarmed the whole West. It 

was under Soliman that the Turkish empire attained its most extended 
limits and its greatest internal strength. In Asia, it embraced Syria 
and the whole country as far as the Tigris ; in Africa, Egypt, with 
the sea-coast, and the piratical states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripolis. 
After Soliman, who died at an advanced age before 
Sigeth, in Hungary (in defence of which the magna- 
nimous Zriny met with the death of a hero), the warlike power of the 
Turks gradually decayed under the exhausting influence of de- 
bauchery and sensual indulgence. 



BOOK THIRD. 



THE MODERN EPOCH. 



I. THE EOBEBITNNEES OE THE MODEEN EPOCH. 

1. THE SEA PASSAGE TO THE EAST INDIES, AND THE DISCOVERT OE 

AMERICA. 

§ 308. En the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many great inven- 
tions hegan to be applied, by which the conditions of the middle ages 
experienced a complete revolution. An Italian, Elavio Gioga, pre- 
pared a compass by means of the magnetic needle, by which a mighty 
impulse was given to navigation ; gunpowder, which, according to 
some, was the invention of a German monk, Berthold Schwarz, and 
in the opinion of others, had been known at a remote period by the 
Chinese and Arabians, came into use in the middle of the fourteenth 
century, and prepared the downfal of chivalry. But the invention 
which was most fertile in results, was the art of printing, 
which was called into existence by John Guttenburg of 
Mayence. His assistants in the work, who alone derived any advan- 
tage from the discovery, were Eust or Eaust, a goldsmith of Mayence, 
and Peter Schoffer, a writer of books. The latter introduced types 
of metal in place of the wooden ones which Guttenburg had em- 
ployed. At first, the art was kept secret; but it was carried by 
German workmen into all the countries of civilized Europe. By this 
means, books, which had hitherto been only attainable by the rich, 
came into the hands of the people, inasmuch as their cost was ma- 
terially lessened by the ease with which they were multiplied. 

§ 309. By the use of the compass it became possible to extend 
navigation, which had hitherto been confined to the coast and the 
Mediterranean, over the ocean. This was first done by the Portu- 
guese. The discovery of the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira, 
where the culture of the vine and sugar-cane succeeded admirably, 
was soon followed by the possession of the Azores and the discovery 
of the Cape de Verd and the coast of Upper Guinea, rich in gold- 



MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 207 

dust, ivory, gum, and Negro slaves. Lower Guinea (Congo) was 
also discovered in the reign of king John II. It was from this point 
that the daring Bartholomew Diaz reached the southern 
extremity of Africa, the original name of which, " the 
Cape of Storms," was soon changed by the sanguine king into that 
of " the Cape of Good Hope." Not more than twenty years after, 
the enterprising Vasco da Grama discovered from this point, in the 
reign of Emanuel the Great, the sea passage to the East Indies, 
when he sailed from the east coast of Africa over the Indian Ocean to 
the coast of Malabar, and entered the haven of Calicut. It was here 
that the Portuguese, after some sharp encounters with the natives, 
established the first European commercial colony, — an undertaking 
which they completed with perseverance and courage. 

After Yasco da Grama and Cabral (who discovered Brazil during the 
passage, and took possession of it for Portugal,) came the gallant 
Almeida, who reduced many of the Indian princes to pay tribute, and 
compelled them to submit to the establishment of factories in their 
chief cities. After he had been killed by the wild Hottentots on his 
return, Albuquerque, in whom heroic courage was united with wis- 
dom, received the governorship of India. He conquered 
~Goa, and made it the capital of the Indian colony; he 
stormed Malacca, the emporium of the trade of Upper India, reduced 
the ruler of Ormuz in the Gulf of Persia to subjection, and caused 
the name of Emanuel to be feared and respected. But the latter 
rewarded his faithful servant with ingratitude ; and grief at this broke 
the hero's heart. During the next ten years, the Portu- 
guese established colonies and factories on the island of 
Ceylon and the coast of Coromandel, and subjected the spice-bearing 
Molucca and Sunda islands. Lisbon became the seat of the commerce 
of the world ; but avarice and selfishness soon stifled the nobler 
emotions in the hearts of the Portuguese. 

§ 310. The zeal for discovery which was awakened by the enter- 
prizes of the Portuguese, inspired the bold Genoese, Christopher 
Columbus (Colon), with the thought of discovering a new way to the 
vaunted Indies, by a western passage. He imparted his project to 
his native city, Genoa, and begged for support ; but there, as well as 
by the Portuguese and English, he was refused. At length, Isabella 
of Castile, in the joy of her heart at the fortunate conquest of 
Granada, allowed herself to be persuaded to fit out three vessels, and 
to intrust them to the bold voyager. The title of Great Admiral and 
Viceroy of all the lands and islands that should be discovered, and a 
tenth part of the revenue that might be expected to be received from 
them, was promised to himself and his posterity, as the reward of his 
success. On the 3rd of August, 1492, the little fleet left the Anda- 



208 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

lusian harbour of Palos, and passed the Canary Islands, sailing con- 
stantly to the "westward. The fear and anxiety of the seamen in- 
creased with the distance they traversed, and at length broke into 
murmuring and open mutiny. The crew were already threatening 
their magnanimous leader with death and destruction unless he 
returned, when the discovery of the island Guahanani (since then 
called St. Salvador), on the 12th of October, saved him. They found 
a beautiful and fruitful country, with naked copper-coloured savages, 
who looked on without the slightest suspicion, whilst their land was 
taken possession of in the names of the royal pair of Spain, and 
exchanged their goods for toys and spangles ; but the anticipated 
treasures in gold, precious stones, and pearls, were not met with in 
the abundance that was hoped for, either here or on the two larger 
islands of Cuba and Hayti (Hispaniola, St. Domingo), which were 
shortly afterw r ards discovered. After Columbus had established a 
colony on Hispaniola, he returned to Spain, and after a daugerous 
voyage, brought back to astonished Europe the intelligence of a new 
world, which, in consequence of the original error, received the name 
of the West Indies. In the course of his three following voyages, 
Columbus discovered more islands (for example, Jamaica), and at 
length also, the north-east coast of South America, not far from the 
mouth of the Oronoco. But this new portion of the world did not 
bear the name of its discoverer, but that of its describer, the Floren- 
tine, Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus shared the lot of many other 
great men — he was not permitted to enjoy the fruits of his labours. 
The colony that had been left behind in Hispaniola had fallen into 
confusion, in consequence of quarrels among themselves and with the 
natives. AVhen Columbus, for the purpose of restoring order, wished 
to punish some of the most licentious disturbers of peace, the latter 
made an accusation against him at the Spanish court. Hereupon, 
king Ferdinand sent a narrow-minded official to make inquiries, who 
commenced his undertaking by depriving Columbus of his governor- 
ship, and ordering him to be carried in fetters to Spain. Here he was 
indeed released from his chains, but nothing was thought about the 
fulfilment of the stipulated contract. Columbus, deprived 
of his offices and dignities, died, shortly after his last 
unfortunate voyage, in Valladolid, from whence his dead body was 
afterwards carried to Cuba. The fetters in which he had been 
brought bound to Spain, were placed with him in his grave by his 
son, Diego. 

§ 311. A new spirit of heroism had been awakened by Columbus ; 
all courageous men who were acquainted with the sea went forth to 
make discoveries. Who could wish to remain idle when so rich a 
field for gold, renown, and ambition stood open ? The hardy and 



CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU. 209 

enterprising Balboa surmounted the rocky isthmus of Panama under 
incredible difficulties, and discovered tbe Pacific Ocean. 
The Portuguese, Magelhaens sailed through the straits, 
named after him, into the Pacific, reached the East India islands, 
after enduring the extremities of famine, and thus made the first 
voyage round the world. Both died violent deaths, the former by his 
envious followers, the latter by the hand of an assassin on the Philip- 
pines. 

The most remarkable event however, was the discovery and con- 
quest of Mexico by Ferdinand Cortez. The contest here 
carried on was not with savages, but with a people who 

AD 1 521 

dwelt in towns, exercised arts and trade, clothed them- 
selves in cotton stuffs, and lived under a regular system of govern- 
ment, with a king, a rich nobility, and a powerful priesthood. "With 
500 valiant Spaniards, who were accompanied by a few native tribes 
(the Tlascalani) as allies, Cortez subjected a populous nation, who 
were deficient neither in warlike spirit nor patriotism, took their 
king, Montezuma, prisoner in his own palace, and conquered the 
chief city, Mexico. The frightful effects of the thundering ordnance, 
the stately cavalry, the splendour of the European military accoutre- 
ments, engendered a notion among the natives, that the Spaniards 
must be a higher order of beings, whom it was impossible for them, 
with their feeble strength and miserable weapons (iron was unknown 
to them), to withstand. "Within two years, Cortez conquered the land, 
and put an end to the horrible idol-worship, in which thousands of 
men were every year offered in sacrifice ; but he was prevented by the 
suspicious government from establishing a new and regulated system. 
He was recalled, and died forgotten in Spain, a.d. 1547. 
a.d. 1529— With still smaller means than Cortez, Pizarro and Al- 
1535. magro, men of great courage and enterprise, but without 

cultivation, and governed by selfishness and the coarser passions, 
effected the conquest of the golden land of Peru. The Peruvians, 
ruled over by the rich royal race of Incas, were a civilized nation of 
mild character, and unstained by the frightful idolatry of the 
Mexicans, but also devoid of their military virtue. A contest for the 
throne among the royal family facilitated the conquest of the land by 
the Spaniards. After the cruel Pizarro had made himself master of 
the king, and, despite his promise to set him free in return for an 
enormous mass of gold, ordered him to be executed, he subjected the 
beautiful land which abounded in gold mines, and founded the new 
a.d. 1535— capital, Lima. Erancis Pizarro and his brother soon 
1538. quarrelled with Almagro (who in the mean time had dis- 

covered Chili), and they turned their arms against each other. Al- 
magro was overcome and beheaded, but his son avenged the death of 
his father on Erancis Pizarro. The land was reduced to the brink 



glO THE MODERN EPOCH. 

of destruction by tlie wild rage of the discoverers. At tliis crisis, 

Charles V. sent a wise and prudent priest, Gasca, as governor to 

Peru: Gasca subdued the rebellious troops, had the last Pizarro 

, ,„ hunej on the gallows, and then arranged the state anew. 
a.d. 1548. 

§ 312. Much as Ave may admire the heroic courage 

and the enterprising spirit displayed by Europeans in the conquest 
of the New World, we must equally deplore the severity and avarice 
which impelled them to the most cruel ill-usage of the natives. 
Those who escaped from the sword, the destructive effects of gun- 
powder, and the multiplied diseases, were mercilessly destroyed by 
severe labours. They were compelled to take care of the plantations 
which the conquerors made on their property, to dig in the gold and 
silver mines which were opened in their country, and to carry bur- 
dens for which their feeble bodies were not fitted. It was in vain 
that well-meaning priests, who attempted as missionaries to bring 
Christianity to the savages, preached kindness and humanity, — 
selfishness hardened the hearts of the Europeans and rendered them 
insensible to the teaching of the Gospel ; and when at length the 
noble priest Las Casas, with the purpose of lightening the lot of the 
Indians, recommended the more robust African negro for the severe 
labours of the plantations, this gave occasion to the horrible slave- 
trade, which was a curse upon the black population, without prevent- 
ing the gradual extinction of the copper-coloured native. The dis- 
covery of the New World and the introduction of American produc- 
tions were attended with vast results on the European manners and 
mode of living. Have not colonial wares, coffee, sugar, tobacco, &c, 
since they have been in general use, become indispensable necessaries ? 
Do not potatoes, which we received from thence, form the most im- 
portant part of the food of the people ? What influence has not the 
increased quantity of the precious metals which the mines of Peru 
have yielded exercised upon all the relations of life and upon the 
value of property ? The natural sciences and geography have been 
so enriched, that since then they have had an entirely different 
aspect. Trade also took a different direction: — as formerly the 
Italian trading towns, so now the western states, Portugal, Spain, 
the Netherlands, and, somewhat later, England, became the centre of 
commerce and the seat of wealth. But as both the former fettered 
their trade from its very commencement, and excluded other nations 
from their colonies, the season of their prosperity was but transient. 

2. THE EEVIVAL OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 

§ 313. In the fifteenth century Italy was the central point of Western 
civilization; many splendid courts and opulent cities contended for 
the glory of becoming patrons of the arts and sciences. The Medici 
in Plorence (§ 288, 289), and several popes, caused manuscripts to 



THE REVIVAL OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 211 

be purchased, and founded libraries and academies ; the printing 
establishments wbich arose in all quarters came to the assistance of 
their efforts. At first, attention was exclusively directed to the 
Latin language and literature ; but when, after the taking of Con- 
stantinople by the Turks, many of the learned men of Byzantium 
took refuge in Italy, Greek also came into fashion. Dictionaries and 
grammars were compiled ; the comprehension of the ancient authors 
was facilitated by commentaries and translations, and a classical Latin 
style became the distinguishing mark of an educated man. The next 
consequence of the revival of classical studies was the establishment of 
fresh seminaries of education, first, in Italy, and afterwards, in the 
other countries of Europe. Many universities, gymnasiums, and edu- 
cational establishments of all sorts arose, especially in Germany, which 
had long maintained a close intercourse with Italy ; and many learned 
men, as John Eeuchlin from Pforzheim (a.d. 1521), Erasmus of Rot- 
terdam (a.d. 1536), and Ulrick of Hulten (a.d. 1523), rivalled the 
great Italians in the knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages 
and of science. The friends of the new culture were called Human- 
ists ; their opponents, the supporters of the scholastic wisdom of the 
middle ages, and above all others, the Dominicans, were named Obscu- 
rantists. The Humanists of all countries were connected with one 
another. Latin, then the universal language of all learned and edu- 
cated men, and a rapid interchange of letters, which supplied the 
place of newspapers, facilitated this intercourse. The contest between 
the new culture and the Obscurantists with their barbarous Latin, 
reached its highest point in the dispute which wasconductedby Eeuchlin 
with the Dominicans of Cologne. The latter wished to burn all the 
Hebrew books, because they were supposed to contain blasphemies 
against Jesus Christ. Eeuchlin, who was appointed umpire in the 
matter by the emperor, declared the charge to be untrue, and opposed 
himself to the design. This so enraged the monks, that they accused 
Eeuchlin of heresy, openly burnt one of his works, and condemned 
the study of the Greek and Hebrew languages. This produced a 
literary war, in which all the friends of education took the part of 
Eeuchlin, and the cause of the Humanists obtained a complete 
triumph. The pope at length put an end to the contest : the Domi- 
nicans were condemned to pay the costs of the process ; and when 
they delayed to do this, they were forced to discharge their obliga- 
tions by Erancis Sickingen. Erom the crowd that assembled itself 
around Eeuchlin, proceeded the Epistolse obscurorum virorum, 
which are said to have been chiefly the production of IJlrick von 
Hutten. In these letters, the proceedings and stupid insolence of the 
monks are faithfully but satirically displayed in their own barbarous 
Latin. Hutten, one of the boldest and most powerful advocates of 
Germany's freedom and independence, died, persecuted and a fugitive, 

p2 



212 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

on the island of Ufhau in the lake of Zurich, in the 36th year of his 
life. Erasmus of Rotterdam, an elegant scholar in ancient literature, 
fought, with all the weapons of wit and intellect, against schoolmen 
and monks. Among his numerous works, the most important are 
The Praise of Polly, — a satirical composition, and an edition of the 
New Testament in the original Greek text, with a Latin translation 
and paraphrase. At first, a friend of Luther and Hutten, he after- 
wards turned from them and opposed them in vehement controversial 
writings. 



II. THE TIME OF THE EEFOEMATION. 

1. THE GEEMAN EEFOEMATION. 
a. DE. MAETIN LTTTHEE. 

§ 311. The cry that passed through Europe in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, for a reformation of the Church hoth in its head and members, 
had remained unheeded by the popes ; and the great ecclesiastical 
synods (§ 264, 266) had been followed by no results. The Church 
had refused the voluntary self-purification that had been required of 
her, and turned a deaf ear to the voice of the people. Since then, 
the abuses had not been diminished. The court of Eome derived a 
vast revenue from the Churches of other countries ; the lower clergy 
were lazy, immoral, and ignorant, and took little or no interest in the 
new culture and the impulse that had been produced by it ; the 
higher clergy led an entirely worldly life, found their enjoyment in 
sensual indulgences and princely magnificence, and in the study of 
works of art and literature, and of the philosophy of heathen anti- 
quity, frequently lost sight of the doctrines of the Gospel. Nothing 
but an impulse was wanting to unite the dissatisfied members of the 
Church in a mighty opposition. This impulse was given by Pope 
Leo X. Por the purpose of defraying the expenses of the erection 
of the church of St. Peter, and of other works of art, Leo offered an 
indulgence for sale, through the elector, Albert of Mayence, in which 
forgiveness of sins, re-attainment of God's grace, and remission from 
the punishments of purgatory, was assured to the piu'chaser. Albert, 
who received one-half of the profits, employed in Saxony the Domini- 
can monk Tetzel, in the sale, who went so audaciously to work, that 
the Augustine monk, Dr. Martin Luther, who saw that real penitence 
and the respect for the confessional was thereby endangered, felt 
himself compelled to affix ninety -five theses to the Castle church at 
Wittenberg, on the eve of All-Saints, with the offer to defend them 
against any one. In these he contested the efficacy of absolution 
without repentance, and denied the power of the pope to grant remis- 
sion of sins to any except the penitent. 



THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 213 

§ 315. Martin Luther was born on the 10th of November, 1483. 
Destined to study by his father, a respectable miner, he had devoted 
himself to jurisprudence, for four years, in Erfurt, when anxiety for 
the salvation of his soul, and the sudden death of a friend during a 
heavy thunder-storm, determined him to enter a cloister. He once 
more entertained himself among his friends with cheerful singing, 
music, and wine, and then shut himself up in the silent cell of an 
Augustine monastery at Erfurt. He here submitted himself to all 
the duties and servile offices of a mendicant monk, but without 
thereby obtaining alleviation of his melancholy, or of the sufferings of 
his soul. It was not until he arrived at the conviction that man can 
only be saved, not by his own works, but by the mercy of God in 
Christ, that his heart found repose. By the recommendation of the chief 
of the order, Staupitz, Luther was summoned to "Wittenberg, in 1508, 
to give lectures in the university, newly established by Frederick the 
"Wise. He had attended with great diligence to his duties as teacher, 
preacher, and pastor of souls, when he was now called by fate to a 
more extended sphere of exertion. 

§ 316. This bold stepping forward of Luther, in whom a deep 
religious earnestness was not to be mistaken, found great sympathy 
in the whole of Germany. A summons was soon issued to him to 
come and defend himself in Rome ; but upon the intercession of the 
elector of Saxony, who was favourably disposed to the reformer, the 
papal nuncio, Cajetanus, undertook the examination in Augsburg. 
Luther, provided with a safe conduct, appeared in a poor plight at 
Augsburg : the proud Dominican thought to refute the humble monk 
by his theological learning ; but Luther displayed more depth and 
reading than the former had given him credit for. After a' short 
disputation, Cajetan commanded him to be gone, and not to appear 
again before him till he (Cajetan) should caU him. After drawing 
up an appeal to the pope better informed, Luther fled hastdy from 
Augsburg during the night. It was in vain that Cajetan required 
the elector either to send the audacious preacher to Home, or at least 
to banish him from his states. Erederick replied that Luther's wish 
to be brought before an hnpartial tribunal appeared to him to be 
reasonable. This protection of the elector was of the more importance 
to Luther, as the former, since the death of the emperor Maximilian, 
was conducting the government, until the princes cOuld agree respect- 
ing a fresh election. Eor as the pope wished to exercise an influence 
on the election of emperor, he attempted to gain over the electors to 
his own side. He sent his chamberlain, Miltitz, an adroit Saxon 
nobleman, with a golden rose to Wittenberg. He was commissioned 
at the same time to dissuade Luther from farther proceedings against 
the Church. Luther promised to let the contest drop if the trade in 
indulgences was put a stop to, and silence imposed upon his adver- 



214 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

saries as well as on himself; and to prove his sincerity, he required, 
in one of his writings, every man to give respect and ohedience to the 
Roman Church, and assured the pope, in a humble letter, that it 
had never been his intention to attack the privdeges of the Roman 
chair. 

§ 317. But the wished-for reconciliation did not take place. John 
von Eck (Eckius), professor in Ingolstadt, a learned man and skilful 
in argument, had a disputation with Luther in Leipsic. Here 
Luther, in the heat of controversy, maintained that the 
bishop of Rome had become the head of the Church, not 
by the ordination of Jesus, but by human arrangements made cen- 
turies later, and threw doubts upon the infallibility of popes and 
councils. Irritated at this audacity, Eckius at once composed a 
learned book, in which he attempted to prove that the papacy was 
derived from Christ himself through Peter, and that, consequently, 
it must be a Divine institution. Eckius hastened to 
' Rome with this book, and procured a Bull, in which a 
succession of Luther's doctrines were condemned as heretical, his 
writings sentenced to be burnt, and he himself threatened with 
excommunication uidess he recanted within sixty days. This pro- 
ceeding of the Roman court, which condemned the German reformer 
upon the accusation of an opponent, without so much as hearing his 
defence, was disapproved of by all Germany. The Bull of excom- 
munication, which was made known by Eckius, produced, therefore, 
very little effect ; it was only in Cologne, Mayence, and Lon^ain, 
that the order for burning Luther's writings was carried into effect ; 
the Bull was not even admitted into Saxony. By so much the greater 
was the effect of some vigorous pamphlets of Luther, " To the 
Christian Nobles of the German Nation," aud " On the Babylonian 
Captivity and Christian Ereedom," in which he exposed without 
reserve the abuses and failings of the existing Church, and demanded 
their removal. Encouraged by the enthusiasm with which these 
writings were received, and the cry for freedom that resounded 
through the German nation, Luther now ventured to take a step that 
separated him by an impenetrable gidf from the Romish Chmch. He 
proceeded, at the head of all the students, to the Elster gate of Wit- 
December 10, tcnberg, and there cast the Bull of excommunication, 
1520. together with the canons and decretals of the Church, into 

the flames. 

§ 318. In the mean time, Maximilian's grandson, Charles V. of 
Spain and Burgundy (§ 291), was elected emperor of Germany, and 
his first undertaking was to be an arrangement of the contentions of 
the Church, lie appointed a diet at Worms, and ordered Luther, 
under the assurance of a safe conduct, to appear. Eull of coinage and 
confidence in God, but not without fear of experiencing the fate of 



THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 215 

Huss (§ 264), Luther arrived at "Worms in the midst of the sym- 
pathizing crowd that was streaming thither. The splendid assembly, 
in which, besides the emperor and the papal ambassador (Alexander), 
there were present many princes, nobles, prelates, and deputies from 
the states, at first disconcerted him. When called upon to recant, 
he begged till the following day for consideration. At his second 
appearance he had recovered the whole of his strength and resolution. 
He declared himself, freely and openly, to be the author of the writ- 
ings that were produced before him ; rejected the invitation to recant 
with the words, " That so long as he should not be convinced out of 
the Holy Scriptures that he was in error, he coidd not and would not 
retract, for that his conscience was imprisoned in God's Word ;" and 
concluded Avith the exclamation, " Here I stand, I can take no other 
course ; Grod help me. Amen." All attempts to induce him to 
soften this declaration failed ; yet no violent proceeding was ventured 
upon. Luther departed in safety ; many princes and members of the 
diet did the same ; then, the ban of the empire was first uttered 
against Luther and his adherents, and his writings condemned to the 
flames. Charles V., at this time in more close alliance with the pope, 
was determined to exterminate heresy. But Luther was already 
secure. Dming his return home, the elector Frederick had him 
seized upon, and carried as a prisoner to the castle of Wartburg, 
under the title of Hitter George. He lived here nearly a year ; at 
first he was lamented by his friends, till some bold fugitive pieces, 
and an angry letter against Albert of Mayence, who was again prac- 
tising the sale of indidgences, convinced them that he was still alive 
and active. Albert repented, and discontinued the traffic. 

§ 319. Whilst Luther, although troubled by sickness and melan- 
choly, was leading an active life at the Wartburg, — proceedings calcu- 
lated to disturb tranquillity arose in Wittenberg, which were not 
repressed with sufficient earnestness by the pious and peace-loving- 
elector. Dr. Carlstadt, a man of confused mind and unsettled in his 
principles, abolished the mass, extended the cup to the laity, and 
exercised his zeal against images and ceremonies. He was soon 
joined by the so-called Zurickkauer prophets, — men without education, 
and under the dominion of fanatical feelings, — who declaimed against 
the baptism of infants, insisted upon the re-baptism of adults 
(hence called Anabaptists), and believed in immediate inspirations 
from Grod. Images, and the garments used in the celebration of the 
mass, were destroyed in some churches, monks fled from their clois- 
ters, and confusion took possession of men's minds. Luther was no 
longer at peace in the castle of Wartburg. He hastened to Witten- 
berg, preached daily for a week against the over-hasty 
and uncharitable innovations, dismissed the Zurickkauer 
fanatics, and won men's minds to a peaceable development of the 



0\Q THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Reformation. "Wittenberg now became the centre of German culture. 
It was here that Philip Melancthon of Bretten, who, when a youth of 
twenty, had already fathomed the depths of learning, and by whose 
means the Saxon schools and church attained a high degree of pros- 
perity, laboured by the side of Luther. Luther's impetuous and 
boisterous energy was well fitted to pluck down, whilst Melancthon' s 
mild and yielding nature was adapted to the work of restoration ; and, 
as Melancthon, the great adept in, and promoter of, humane studies, 
sought, by his learned Latin writings to establish the new Church 
doctrines on a scientific basis, so Luther won the hearts of the people 
by his Grerman writings and songs, and especially by his translation 
of the Bible. This Lutheran Bible, which was begun in the castle of 
Wartburg and finished in "Wittenberg, after careful consultation with 
his friends, appeared completed in 1534, a master-piece of the German 
language and of the Grerman spirit. 

§ 320. The new doctrine soon spread beyond the limits of Saxony. 
Besides the elector of Saxony, the energetic landgraf, Philip of 
Hessen, the founder of the university of Marburg, was, in particidar, 
a zealous promoter of the Gospel. But it was the educated burghers 
of the imperial cities who distinguished themselves beyond all others 
by their zeal. The assembled people would often of their own accord 
set up a psalm or a hymn, and by this means gave an impulse to the 
abolishing of the mass. Where the church was denied to the evan- 
gelically-minded people, they held their devotions in the open air, in 
fields and meadows ; and where religious motives were not sufficiently 
powerful, there the view of the Church property and worldly advan- 
tages helped out what was wantiug. The whole of Germany appeared 
to be hurried away in this Church movement, and a national Church, 
independent of Rome, to spring up from it. But the pope won over 
Perdinand of Austria, the duke of Bavaria, and several 
South German bishops, to the alliance of Regensburg, in 
which they vowed mutually to support each other, and to exclude the 
innovations of Wittenberg from their dominions. Thus were the 
seeds of an unhappy division spread abroad in Germany at the very 
moment when the freedom and independence of the nation was the 
aspiration of her noblest spirits. 

h. THE PEASANT WAR. 

§ 321. The general call to freedom and independence that, since 
Luther's appearance, had resounded through all Germany, filled the 
peasants with the hope of alleviating their condition by their own 
exertions. In this way originated the peasant war. At first patrioti- 
cally disposed men, like Sickingen and Hutten, appeared to wish to 
place themselves at the head of the movement, and to carry through 
the renovation of Germany, both in state and Church, by the sword. 



THE PEASANT WAR. 217 

But Sickingen's early death during the siege of his castle of Land- 
stuhl, and Hutten's flight, delayed the outbreak, and robbed it of 
plan and proportion. The fanatical discourses of the fickle Ana- 
baptist, Thomas Miinzer, who talked of abolishing temporal and 
spiritual power, and of setting up a heavenly kingdom where all men 
should be equal, and every distinction between rich and poor, noble 
and base, should disappear, confused the understandings of the excited 
peasants. It was not long before the people, from the Boden Lake 
to Dreisam, assembled themselves around Hans Midler of Bulgen- 
bach, who had formerly been a soldier. He marched in a red mantle 
and cap from village to village, at the head of his followers. The 
chief banner was borne behind him on a carriage decorated with 
boughs and ribbons. They carried twelve Articles with them, the 
importance of which they were ready to maintain with their swords. 
By these Articles, they demanded the liberty of hunting, fishing, 
cutting wood, &c. ; the abolition of serfdom, socage duties, and tithes ; 
the right of choosing their own ministers ; and the free preaching of 
the Gospel. Their example was soon followed by the peasants in the 
Odenwald, and by those on the Neckar and in Eranconia, under the 
conduct of the audacious publican, G-eorge Metzler. They compelled 
the counts of Hohenlohe, Lowenstein, "Wertheim, Gennningen, the 
superiors of the German order in Mergentheim, and others to accept 
the Articles, and to concede the privileges demanded, to their sub- 
jects ; whoever dared to resist them, as count Helfenstein von "Weins- 
berg, was put to a cruel death. They marched through the land 
burning and devastating ; they destroyed the monasteries and castles, 
and took a bloody revenge on their oppressors and adversaries. 
Under the conduct of brave knights like Florian Geier and Gotz von 
Berlechingen of the Iron Hand, they penetrated into Wurzburg, 
whilst other bands ravaged the lands of Baden. The insurrection soon 
extended itself over the whole of Swabia, Franconia, Alsacia, and the 
lands of the Bhine. The spiritual and temporal princes became 
alarmed, and conceded a part of the demands of the irritated peasants. 
In Thuringia and the Harz the revolt assumed more of a religious 
character. In Muhlhausen, Thomas Miinzer had acquired great 
respect and the reputation of a prophet. He rejected Luther's 
moderate views, girded himself with the sword of Gideon, and wished 
to establish a Divine kingdom, the members of which should be all 
free and equal. The people, excited by his preaching, destroyed 
castles, monasteries, and the memorials of antiquity, in their bar- 
barous fury. 

§ 322. In the commencement, before the insurrection had yet assumed 
so formidable an aspect, Luther attempted to restore peace : he repre- 
sented to the nobles and princes that they had been guilty of acts of 
violence ; and at the same time exhorted the peasants to refrain from 



21 S THE MODERN EPOCH. 

rebellion. But when the danger increased, Avhen temporal and 
spiritual things were mingled together, he published a forcible tract 
" against the plundering and bloodthirsty peasants," in which he 
called upon the magistrates to attack them with the sword, and to 
show them no sort of mercy. Upon this, the nobles and knights 
assembled themselves from all quarters against the rebels. The elec- 
tor John of Saxony, the landgraf Philip of Hessen, and others, 
marched into Thuringia and won an easy victory, by means of their 
artillery, over Thomas Miinzer and his half-armed peasants. A place 
of execution was set up before Miihlhausen, on which the Thuringian 
"prophet" was put to a bloody death after undergoing frightful 
tortures. 

Truchsess of Waldburg, captain of the Swabian league, restored peace 
in Swabia, and then marched, in conjunction with the elector of the Pala- 
tinate and the warlike archbishop of Triers, against the bands of Bran- 
conia, who were besieging the strong castle of Wurzburg. Here again 
superior military skill and better arms triumphed over the disorderly 
crowd. The insurgents, after a short defence, betook themselves to a 
headlong flight, in which most of them were killed ; the prisoners were 
put to death, and a severe punishment inflicted on the citizens of the 
Prank towns, who had sided with the rebels. The axe of the exe- 
cutioner was long busy in "Wurzburg. The same was the case in 
Alsacia and the Middle Blnne-land, and also in the Black Porest and 
at the sources of the Danube, where the insurrection had lasted 
longest. At length, the Truchsess of "Waldburg and the renowned 
condottiere, George of Prendsberg, succeeded, by dint of severity, in 
restoring order. In the majority of places, the peasants were again 
oppressed with all their former burdens, and in many spots the cry 
was loudly echoed, " If they have formerly been chastised with rods, 
they shall now be scourged with scorpions." 

C. THE PROTESTATION AND THE CONFESSION OE AUGSBERO. 

§ 323. The new Church grew stronger and stronger in the midst 
of battles and disturbances, and Luther's energy increased with oppo- 
sition. He left the cloister of Augustines in 1524, and, in the fol- 
lowing year, married Catherine of Bora, who had been formerly a nun. 
Surrounded by a circle of sincere friends, and by his brothers in 
office, he now led the life of domestic happiness which was so well 
suited to his disposition. His energy, and cheerful confidence hi 
God were neither broken nor disturbed by his poverty, or the repeated 
attacks of illness he experienced. By his two Catechisms he laid the 
foundation oi" a uniform confession of faith, and of a better religious 
education. Mclancthon, upon whom the elector, about this time, 
devolved the troublesome task of holding a general visitation of the 
churches all over Saxony, was not less active. The Beformation made 



THE CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG. gl9 

such advances by the united efforts of these two men, that the 
Catholic princes, both temporal and spiritual, became alarmed. They 
therefore passed a resolution at the Diet of Spire, that 
no farther innovations should be made in religion, that 
the new doctrines should not be farther disseminated, and that no 
impediment should be given to the celebration of the mass. It was 
against this decree of the Diet, by which the Reformation would 
have been condemned to a fatal pause, that a Protest was entered by 
many of the princes and imperial towns. It was for this reason that 
they, in common with all those who rejected the authority of the 
pope and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, received the 
name of Protestants. As the emperor woidd not receive the pro- 
testation, which was brought to him in Italy, the protesting princes 
and towns would at once have arranged a confederacy for their mutual 
defence, had not Luther and the evangelical theologians, with " a 
magnanimous scrupulousness," rejected every defence of the Word of 
God by worldly weapons. 

§ 324. In the following spring, the emperor opened the splendid 
Diet of Augsburg. It was here that the protesting Estates presented 
their Confession, which had been drawn up by Melancthon both in 
the German and Latin languages, and approved of by Luther. In 
this Confession, they endeavoured to show that they had no wish to 
establish a new Church, but only to purify and restore the old one. 
This Confession of faith, which was composed with great temperance 
and clearness, embraced, in the first part, the doctrines of the 
reformers, laid down in as close accordance as was possible with the 
faith of the Catholic Church ; and in the second part, the abuses 
against which the reformers were contending. After the reading of 
the Augsburg Confession, the assembly embraced the resolution of 
justifying the doctrines and usages of the Catholic Church by a refu- 
tation, and then seeing if it would not be possible to bring about a 
composition by a conference between men of moderate tempers 
selected from both parties. But the " Refutation," drawn up by 
Eekius, Cochleeus, and some others, produced but little effect, owing 
to the weakness of its arguments, and was entirely overthrown by 
Melancthon' s "Apology ;" the conference also led to nothing, since 
both the pope and Luther, who, during the Diet, had remained at 
Coburg, were averse to any further concessions. It seemed that the 
unity of the Church could be only restored by the sword. The pro- 
testing princes and the principal imperial towns rejected the decision 
of the Diet by which they were prohibited from extending their doc- 
trine and were described as a sect, and quitted Augsburg. The 
resolution of the Diet that was determined on after their departure, 
in which the new sect was threatened with a rapid extirpation, and 
the sentence of excommunication denounced against all those who, 



220 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

■within a certain space, should not renounce their arbitrary innova- 
tions, alarmed neither the princes, the peace of whose consciences 
was a matter of higher importance to them than the favour of the 
emperor, — nor the reformer of AVittenberg, whose confidence and 
cheerful trust in God was at that time at its height, as is testified by 
the immortal hymn, "The Lord is a strong castle," which was com- 
posed during the storms of those days. 

(I. ULKIC ZWINGLE. 

§ 325. The Protestant Church of Germany was unhappily, even at 
this time, divided into the Lutheran and Zwinglian. TJlric Zwingle 
(born 1484), a classically-educated, liberally-minded priest of repub- 
lican principles, exerted himself zealously as canon of Zurich against 
the sale of indidgences by the Franciscan monk, Samson ; against 
ecclesiastical abuses of all kinds ; and against the custom of the Swiss 
of engaging themselves as mercenaries in foreign services. Zwingle, 
a man of practical understanding, without the religious depth of mind 
or the disposition of Luther, did not busy himself with the reformation 
of doctrine and articles of faith, but with the improvement of life and 
morals. He set about the work also with far less ceremony, inas- 
much as he wished to restore primitive Christianity in its simplest 
form. Having a good understanding with the chief council of Zurich, 
he undertook a complete revolution of ecclesiastical doctrine and 
practice, banished all images, crosses, candles, altars, and organs, 
from the churches, and administered the Lord's Supper, in which he 
recognized nothing but a token of remembrance and fellowship, after 
the manner of the early Christian love-feasts, that is, the communi- 
cants received the consecrated elements whilst sitting. This latter 
proceeding entangled Zwingle in a fatal controversy with Luther. 
Luther would not receive the words employed in instituting the 
sacrament, "this is my body," in the sense of "this represents my 
body," as Zwingle explained them, but asserted the bodily presence 
of Christ in the Lord's Supper. It was in vain that Philip of Hessen 
attempted to prevent this dangerous division by a disputation at 
Marburg. Luther saw a denial of Christ in the doctrine maintained 
by his opponent, and thrust back the brotherly hand that Zwingle 
offered him with tears. He also opposed himself to any union with 
the towns of Upper Germany which had adopted Zwingle's views, 
so that these presented their own confession of faith to the Augs- 
burg Diet. 

§ 326. The same disturbances succeeded the appearance of Zwingle 
in Switzerland as had followed that of Luther in Germany. In 
Zurich, Basle, Berne, in Schaifhausen, the Bhinethal, and other 
cantons, the Church was reformed according to the principles of 
Zwingle; in Appenzell, the Grisons, St. Gall, Glarus, and other 



THE WARS OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 221 

places, the adherents of the old Church contended with those of the 
new ; but in the four forest cantons (Schwitz, Uri, Unterwalden, and 
Lucerne), and in Zug, the Catholic faith remained predominant. This 
was occasioned, in addition to the influence exercised on the simple 
inhabitants of these original cantons by the monks and clergy, by the 
circumstance that the engaging in foreign military services, a custom 
opposed by the reformers, here formed one of the principal means of 
support. These five places concluded an alliance with Austria, and 
suppressed every innovation with a strong hand ; whilst Berne and 
Zurich, on the other hand, afforded their assistance with uncharitable 
zeal and violence in the frontier towns of the Reformation. In this ex- 
cited state of men's minds a war was inevitable, particularly as Zwingle 
entertained the project of effecting such a political revolution in 
Switzerland as would give the supremacy to the two most powerful 
cantons, Berne and Zurich. Mutual revilings of the clergy, which 
remained unpunished, increased the irritation and provoked hostilities. 
Zurich and Berne blocked up the public roads, and prevented the 
transport of goods and of the necessaries of life. This proceeding 
enraged the Catholic cantons. They made preparations in secret, 
and fell upon the people of Zurich. The latter, surprised, irresolute, 
and forsaken by the Bernese, marched with a troop of 2000 men 
against an enemy of four times their number, but sustained a bloody 
defeat in the battle of Kappel. The courageous Zwingle, 
who had marched with them as field preacher, fell beside 
the banner of the city, and with him fell the staunchest friends of 
the reformation. . His dead body, after being exposed to the insults 
of the enraged midtitude, was at length burnt and the ashes scattered 
to the winds. This event restored the old Church in many places 
that were favourably disposed to the reformation, and was the occa- 
sion of the religious divisions that since that time have prevailed in 
Switzerland. 

2. THE WARS Or THE HOUSE OE HAPSBTTKG WITH EKAKCE. 

r) , v § 327. Charles V. reigned over an empire such as had 

a.d. 1500— not existed since the days of Charlemagne. Before 
1558. arriving at years of maturity he was already lord of the 

rich Netherlands, which had devolved upon him as his paternal in- 
heritance ; when a youth (after the death of his paternal grandfather, 
Frederick the Catholic), he obtained possession of the united Spanish 
empire, with the beautiful kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and the 
newly-discovered territories in America in the West Indies ; he in- 
herited in early manhood the Hapsburgo-Austrian States (which he 
relinquished to his brother, Ferdinand), and became the successor of 
his grandfather, Maximilian, on the imperial throne of Germany, by 
the choice of the electors. He might say with truth that the sun 



ooo THE MODERN EPOCH. 

never set in his dominions. He was a man of rare sagacity and inde- 
fatigable activity ; great in the cabinet as director of the affairs of 
state, and brave in the field as leader of the ranks of -war. His 
antagonist and rival was Francis I. of France, who was as mnch 
renowned for his love of the arts and sciences, and for his chivalrous 
conduct in the field, as he was infamous for his tyranny, his luxury, 
and love of pleasure, and his devotion to his mistresses. An unex- 
tinguishable jealousy subsisted between Francis and Charles. Each 
wished to be the first prince in Europe ; and each eagerly contested 
the possession of the imperial throne of Germany, which could alone 
procure him this supremacy. Charles triumphed, and from that 
moment Francis became his decided enemy, and sought every means 
of weakening his power. Four wars arose out of this contention, 
which were principally occasioned by Milan. This beautiful duke- 
dom had remained in the hands of the French since the battle of 
Marignano (§ 286) ; but Charles claimed it as a fief of the German 
empire, and led a vast army, composed chiefly of German peasants, 
under the conduct of the valiant condottieri, Frundsberg, Schartlin, 
and others, against the French and their allies, the Swiss. At that 
time war was carried on with mercenary troops exclusively ; no nation 
could venture to oppose themselves to the Helvetians and Germans ; 
the knightly tactics of an earlier period had fallen before their match- 
locks, as the castles before their heavy artillery. The French were 
conquered. They lost Milan and Genoa after several bloody encoun- 
ters, and were forced to retreat over the Alps. It was during the 
retreat, that the gallant Bayard, "the knight without fear and without 
reproach," fell by a ball from a German arquebusier. The imperial 
army, conducted by the Constable of Bourbon, the richest and the 
most powerful of the French nobles, who had entered into Charles's 
service for the purpose of revenging his injuries and wrongs upon 
the French court, marched into the south of France, but soon saw 
itself compelled to retreat by the gallant resistance of the burghers of 
Marseilles. 

§ 328. Francis I. himself now marched into Italy, at the head of a 
stately and well-appointed army, for the purpose of wiping off the 
disgrace of the defeat, and winning back that which had been lost. 
But being detained for a long time before the walls of Pavia, the 
active Bourbon succeeded in collecting a fresh army of peasants, and 
uniting himself with the Spanish general, Pescara. But want of 
money and the necessaries of life soon reduced the united forces to 
the greatest distress, whilst the wealthy camp of the French was 
abundantly supplied with every thing needful. Bourbon and Frunds- 
berg took advantage of this circumstance to excite the peasants to 
attempt the storm of the French camp. The bloody fight 
of Pavia, in which the French were defeated, originated 



THE WARS OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. £23 

in a nocturnal attack. Francis I. himself, after a chivalrous defence, 
was compelled to surrender, and to proceed as a prisoner to Madrid. 
10,000 gallant warriors found their deaths on the field of battle or in 
the waters of the Ticino. After a year's captivity, Francis, with 
inward reluctance, consented to the Peace of Madrid, in which he 
swore to renounce his claims iipon Milan, and to surrender the duke- 
dom of Burgundy. 

Scarcely, however, had Francis, after giving up his two sons as 
hostages, regained his own kingdom, than the pope released him 
from his oath, and concluded a holy alliance with him, the king of 
England, and some Italian princes, for the purpose of delivering Italy 
from the Spanish yoke. The flames of war burst forth anew in Italy ; 
the beat of the drum was again heard in the German states to sum- 
mons the peasants to the standard. As this was an expedition against 
the pope, the Lutherans came forward in crowds, so that the brave 
Frundsberg was soon enabled to lead a gallant army across the Alps, 
and to unite himself with Bourbon. But money was soon wanting 
to pay the troops ; a rebellion in the army gave such a shock to 
Frundsberg that he was deprived of speech by an attack of apoplexy, 
and shortly after lost his life. The troops demanded to be led to 
Home, and Boiubon yielded to their wishes. It was on the 6th of 
May, 1527, that the Spanish and German soldiers scaled the walls of 
Rome. Bourbon was one of the first who fell. The licentious bands, 
unchecked by the presence of a leader, dispersed themselves through 
the city and committed every sort of outrage. The rich palaces 
and dwelling-houses were plundered, the churches robbed of their 
vessels and ornaments ; the Germans insulted the pope and cardinals 
by ridiculous processions and mummeries. Clement was obliged to 
purchase his freedom under harsh conditions, and made use of the 
first opportunity to escape. The emperor affected a display of grief 
and displeasure at the injuries suffered by the head of the Church, 
though inwardly pleased at his humiliation. 

In the meanwhile, the French had made some conquests in Upper 
Italy, and then marched into Naples, for the purpose of wresting this 
kingdom from the Spaniards. But their army sufferhig severely from 
pestilence, and the troops of the emperor being reduced one-half by 
their excesses in Borne, both parties became desirous of peace. The 
contending kings arranged their differences by the interposition of 
the mother of Francis and the aunt of Charles, in what was called 
the Ladies' Peace of Cambray ; in virtue of which Francis 
relinquished his pretensions to Milan, and paid two mil- 
lion crowns for the ransom of his two sons, but retained possession 
of Burgundy. The pope also, and the Italian princes, soon made 
them peace. Charles was invested with the Roman and Lombard 
crowns by Clement, who lived with him in Bologna under the same 



224 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

roof, and promised, in return, to exterminate heresy and to bring back 
the expelled Medici to Florence. The latter project was accomplished ; 
Florence was conquered and deprived of its republican constitution 
(§ 289). But the restoration of the unity of the Church was no 
longer in the power of man. The Diet of Augsburg, that was 
appointed for this purpose, did not conduce to the desired result 
(§ 32-1). 

§ 329. Francis, however, did not relinquish the thought of again 
recovering the dukedom of Mdan, and even entered into an alnance 
with the Turks a short time after, for the purpose of attaining this 
object. In the same year in which Charles took Tunis by a gallant 
attack, put an end to the piracies of the Mohammedan 
prince, Hayraddin Barbarossa, and set 20,000 Christian 
captives at liberty, Francis made a sudden campaign into Upper 
Italy, and took possession, as a preliminary step, of Savoy and Pied- 
mont, the duke of which was a relative and ally of Charles. But in 
the following year, Charles marched with a stately army into Pro- 
vence, for the purpose of carrying the war into his enemy's own terri- 
tory ; but was compelled to retreat with loss, in consequence of the 
French general, the Constable Montmorenci reducing the whole of 
the level country between the Rhone and the passes of the Alps to a 
desert, and thus producing scarcity and disease in the emperor's 
army. But as the whole of Christendom Avas indignant at the alliance 
between Francis and the Osmans, who committed horrible devasta- 
tions in Lower Italy and the Greek islands, Pope Paul III. interposed 
as a mediator, and brought about the conclusion of the 
a.d. 1538. ^.^ war ky ^g ten y ears ' truce of Nice, which allowed 

every one to retain that of which he was then in possession. A per- 
sonal interview between the two monarchs was to have obliterated all 
their differences for ever ; and Charles was so convinced 
a.d. 1539. of the kuiglltl y faitll of llis rival, that in the following 

year, when an insurrection in Ghent required his immediate presence 
in the Netherlands, he took his road thither through Paris. But this 
friendship was not of long duration. In the year 1511, Charles 
undertook a second African expedition for the purpose of 
a.d. 1541. coni pl e tely destroying the corsairs, who rendered the 
Mediterranean insecure from Algiers, as they had formerly done from 
Tunis. But this time the attack was frustrated by the storms and 
rains of the latter autumn, and by the attacks of the enemy, which 
were rendered particularly dangerous by the swampy character of the 
ground. The emperor, who magnanimously shared all the dangers 
and sufferings of the meanest of his followers, was obliged to retreat 
without effecting his object, after suffering a considerable loss in ships 
and troops. This termination of the enterprise may have filled the 
French king with the hope that he might at length be able to over- 



THE WAR OF RELIGION IN GERMANY. 005 

power his adversary. He, therefore, after effecting an alliance with 
a.d. 1542— the snltan, commenced a fourth war against the emperor. 
1544. ;b u £ w h eri the latter marched with a vast army out of 

Germany into Champagne, and approached within two days' march 
of the terrified capital, Francis hastened to conclude the 
peace of Crespy. From this time the supremacy of the 
house of Hapsburg in Italy remained undisputed. Francis I. died 
three years afterwards, but his son and successor, Henry II., followed 
Henry II. ^e same P a th. During the war of religion in Germany 
a.d. 1547— he entered into alliance with the Protestant princes 
1559. ^g 337), whilst in his own dominions he suppressed the 

new doctrines by bloody persecutions. When Charles V. at length 
quitted the world's stage, the war was still continued for a few years 
between his son, Philip II., and the French king, till at 
length the peace of Chateau- Cambresis put an end to the 
open contest between the two monarchs, without, however, extinguish- 
ing the hereditary animosity between the royal houses of France and 
Hapsburg. 

3. THE WAR OE RELIGION IN GERMANY. 

§ 330. This war, and the apprehensions that were entertained of 
the Turks, who led army after army into the Austrian territories, 
prevented the emperor from putting into effect the resolution of the 
Diet of Augsburg against the German Protestants, and compelling 
them by force to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church. When, 
in consequence of. this order, the imperial chamber began to proceed 
against the evangelical states on account of their confiscation of 
ecclesiastical property, the Lutheran princes and cities, under the 
conduct of the elector of Saxony and the landgraf of Hesse, formed 
themselves into a league at Smalcald, in the Thuringian 

A.D. 1531. . . 

forest, for their mutual defence in case any of them shoidd 
be attacked for the Word of God's sake. In the following year the 
emperor concluded the peace of Nuremberg with this league, in 
which both parties promised to refrain from hostilities till a Council 
of the Church, the calling of which was vehemently urged upon 
Clement VII. by the emperor, shoidd be assembled. The law pro- 
ceedings were, in the mean time, to cease. This treaty bound the 
hands of the Protestants without giving them any assurance for the 
future ; but afforded great facilities for the diffusion of the Gospel 
over the whole of Germany. The introduction of the Lutheran form 
of worship into Wirtemberg was an event of the greatest importance. 
Duke Ulrick, a hasty- tempered and cruel man, who, from motives of 
jealousy, had slain a knight of his court (Hans von Hutten) with his 
own hand, had compelled his wife to take flight by his bad treatment 
had oppressed his subjects and conquered the imperial city of Reut- 

Q 



£26 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

lingen, was at length outlawed for disturbing the peace of the coun- 
try, and driven from his land and vassals by the Swabian league. For 
fourteen years TJlrick was compelled to lead a wandering life abroad, 
and to shun his dukedom, which, in the mean time, was placed under 
the government of Austria, when landgraf Philip of Hesse embraced 
the resolution of restoring to Wirtemberg, the duke who was then 
living at his court. He marched into Swabia with a well-appointed 
army, defeated the Austrian governor at Laufeu on the Neckar, and 
re-established the lawful ruler. TJlrick was received with joy by his 
people, who had forgotten his former tyranny, and who were easily 
induced to receive the evangelical doctrines which TJlrick had adopted 
in his misfortunes, and which he now had disseminated by Brenz and 
Schnepf. The Church in Wirtemberg soon became Lutheran, and 
Tubingen was one of the most distinguished seminaries of evangelical 
learning. 

§ 331. But the new Church was not wanting in spurious growths. 
The doctrine of the Anabaptists, who mistook their own passions for 
divine inspirations, had not been suppressed by the death of Thomas 
Miinzer (§ 322). Notwithstanding the opposition of the reformers 
and the discouragement given by every lawful magistrate, it would 
re-appear here and there, in places where it had been secretly carried 
by fugitives. The doctrines of these Anabaptists displayed them- 
selves in their most frightful shape in Munster. It was in this place 
that the Reformation had made violent way for itself, and had com- 
pelled the bishop and canons to take flight. But it soon became 
evident that Bottman, the most influential of its preachers, enter- 
tained anabaptist notions. When two vagabond prophets from the 
Netherlands, Jan Matthys and his countryman and disciple, the 
tailor, John Bockold (called John of Leyden), joined themselves to 
him, the anabaptist party in a short time attained so complete a 
supremacy, that they got possession of all the city offices, drove all 
the inhabitants who were not of their own way of thinking out of the 
town in the midst of winter, and divided their property among them- 
selves. They now established a religious commonwealth, in Avhich 
Matthys possessed unlimited power, introduced community of goods, 
and conducted the defence of the city against the besieging army of 
the bishop of Munster. The fanaticism rose to its height when 
Matthys was killed in a sally against the enemy and Bockhold was 
placed at the head of the commonwealth. This man transferred the 
government of the city to tw r elve elders, whom he selected from the 
most violent of the fanatics, and among whom, Knipperdoling, who 
was burgomaster and executioner 1 , played the most distinguished part. 
He then introduced the practice of polygamy, and mercilessly put to 
death those who indignantly denounced this outrage to Christian 
morality. "When this crazy fanaticism had reached its highest pitch, 



THE WAR OF RELIGION IN GERMANY. 227 

the prophet assumed the title (from Divine inspiration) of " King of 
the New Israel." This "tailor king," ornamented with the insignia 
of his rank (a crown and a globe suspended by a golden chain), and 
magnificently clothed, held his sittings for the administration of 
justice in the market-place of Minister, where the " chair of David " 
was set up, and introduced a government of mixed tyranny and 
fanaticism, in which spiritual pride and carnal lust were most repul- 
sively associated. 

For a long time, the Anabaptists resisted the attacks of their 
imperfectly-armed enemies with courage and success ; when the 
besieging army had been re-inforced by the empire, and the closely 
pressed town began to suffer the horrors of famine, they still reso- 
lutely maintained their defence ; and even when the enemy were 
within their walls they still resisted with the courage of desperation. 
Hottinan fell fighting ; John of Leyden and Knipperdoling were put 
to death by torture, and their dead bodies suspended in iron cages on 
the tower ; the others were either executed or expelled the city. The 
bishop, the canons, and the nobility, returned and introduced Catholi- 
cism again in all its rigour, which since that time has retained its 
pre-eminence in Munster. 

After a few decenniums, the Anabaptists experienced a wholesome 
reformation of their doctrines and discipline from Menno, in which 
they have continued to the present day, under the name of Men- 
nonites. They are still distinguished by simplicity of dress and 
manner of living, by their rejection of a separate priesthood, of infant 
baptism, of oaths, of military service, &c, but they have given up 
those principles of an earlier period which were dangerous to 
morality and the state. They lead a quiet life as tenant farmers and 
peasants. 

§ 332. Shortly after this, the reformed doctrines gained admission 
into the duchy of Saxony and the electorate of Brandenburg, by the 
death of two princes who had hitherto clung resolutely to the Roman 
Catholic creed. Duke George of Saxony was followed by 
his brother Henry, who, like his son Maurice, was devoted 
to the Reformation, and ordered the reformed worship to be esta- 
blished in Leipsic, Meissen, and Dresden. In the same year, Joachim 
II. received the Lord's Supper under both forms in Spandau, upon 
which the country embraced the Protestant doctrine. The conversion 
of Saxony and Brandenbiu'g was decisive for the whole north of Ger- 
many. Henry of Braunschweig- Wolfenbuttel, a cruel and profligate 
man, alone adhered to the ancient Church, less from conviction than 
from animosity to the landgraf of Hesse, the former friend of his 
youth. . But the Gospel triumphed even in Wolfenbiittel, when, after 
a furious controversy, injurious alike to the dignity of princes and 
human nature, Henry was overpowered by Hessian and Saxon troops 

Q 2 



228 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

and carried into captivity. Otto Heinreicli ordered the Lutheran 
doctrines to be taught in the Upper Palatinate by the Nuremburger 
preacher, Osiander; and a few weeks before Luther's death, the 
Eucharist was administered in both forms in the Palatinate of the 
Rhine, after the congregation which assembled on the 3rd of January 
to hear mass, in the church of the Holy Ghost, had set up the evan- 
gelical hymn, "Salvation hath visited us." Baden-Durlach also 
acknowledged the reformed confession ; and when the elector, Her- 
mann of Cologne, proposed a moderate plan of reformation to his 
Estates, and the duke of Cleves appeared inclined to join the league 
of Smalcald, it seemed that the Catholic Church of Germany must 
succumb, unless a stop were put to the progress of the Reformation 
by force. The emperor was convinced that neither Diets nor religious 
discussions could heal the division in the Church ; his hopes rested 
entirely on the general council which Pope Paul III. had summoned 
at Trent. But the Protestants, who foresaw that their doctrines 
would be condemned in a council that was thus held under the autho- 
rity of the pope, rejected it, as being neither free nor impartial, and 
demanded a general synod of the Church of Germany. This destroyed 
the emperor's last hope of an amicable arrangement, and determined 
him to attempt the restoration of the Church by force of arms. One 
Luther dies J ear a ^ev Luther's death, at his native city of Eisleben, 
Feb. 18th, whither he had been summoned to compose a difference, 
the war of Smalcald broke out between Charles V. and 
the Protestant princes and cities of Germany. 

§ 333. When the emperor had determined upon war, he entered 
into a secret alliance with the pope, who promised him subsidies of 
money, with the spiritual electors, and Avith the duke of Bavaria ; but 
he found the most important of his allies in the Protestant duke, 
Maurice of Saxony. This young, shrewd, and military prince, who, 
since 1541, had been the rider of Albertine Saxony, had long sepa- 
rated himself from the league of Smalcald and joined the emperor, 
out of envy and hatred to his cousin, John Frederick, although Philip 
of Hesse was his father-in-law. This alliance was again renewed. 
Maurice promised obedience and devotion to the emperor, and sub- 
mission to the resolutions of the Tridentine Council, provided it gave 
its sanction to the three chief points in the Protestant view, — justifi- 
cation by faith, the cup, and the marriage of the clergy. Charles, in 
return, held out the prospect of an increase of his territories and the 
electorship of Saxony. The Protestants had so little suspicion of this 
arrangement, that when the Smalcald forces marched into the field, 
I lie elector, during his absence with the army, made over the govern- 
ment of Courland to his cousin Maurice. The brave Schartlin, whom 
the Upper German cities had chosen general, wished to bring matters 
to a conclusion, by making a rapid advance upon Regensburg, where 



THE WAR OF RELIGION IN GERMANY. 229 

the emperor was posted with a handful of troops, but the council of 
war, fearful of doing injury to Bavaria, forbade the enterprise. Upon 
this, Schartlin turned towards Tyrol, with the purpose of cutting off 
the advance of the Italian troops, or of dispersing the Council of 
Trent ; — but this undertaking was also disapproved of, lest Ferdinand 
should be offended. In this manner, Charles, who had already pro- 
nounced the ban against the electors and landgraves for treason 
against the emperor and the empire, gained time to draw his auxi- 
liaries from Italy, and to occupy a strong position at Ingolstadt. 
Here also the Protestants threw away the time in trifling and useless 
encounters, till the troops of the Netherlands having united them- 
selves to the imperial army, Charles was in a position to assume the 
offensive. He marched into Swabia, whither he was followed by the 
army of Smalcald. The damp and cold weather occasioned sickness 
among the Spanish and Italian troops, and afforded the Protestants a 
hope of effecting a favourable composition, when the intelligence that 
Maurice and his friends and companions in the faith had proved 
traitors, and had marched an hostile army into Courland, changed 
the whole face of affairs. John Frederick at once hastened back to 
his states ; the landgraf and the other leaders soon returned, and in a 
short time the whole army of Smalcald was dissolved. 

§ 334. South Germany now stood open to the emperor. Well- 
intentioned advisers endeavoured to persuade him to allow free tolera- 
tion to religious opinions, and by this means to bring back his Estates 
to their former obedience and devotion. But Charles was bent upon 
bringing back the unity of the Church, and, at the same time, on 
restoring the imperial authority to its ancient dignity. "With this 
object, he required the princes and cities of Southern Germany to 
submit themselves, and to renounce the league of Smalcald. The 
terrified imperial cities soon yielded obedience to the demand. Ulm 
surrendered her artillery, and purchased the favour of the emperor by 
large sums of money ; Heilbron, Esslingen, Beutlingen, and many 
others did the same. Augsburg was so well provided with artillery and 
provisions, that Schartlin offered the magistrates to defend it for a year 
and a day, till Protestant Germany should have recovered itself and be 
prepared for fresh encounters ; but the pusillanimous council of traders 
(Pugger in particular) gained the victory. The emperor took pos- 
session of the town, and with it, the admirable artillery and a large 
sum of money. Frankfort and Strasburg soon followed. The old 
duke of Wirtemberg humbled himself, paid his contributions to the 
war, and surrendered his most important fortresses to the imperial 
troops. The old elector of Cologne, anathematized by the pope, 
threatened by the Spanish troops, and at last abandoned by his 
Estates, renounced his office in favour of a follower of the old creed, 
who soon thrust aside the German worship of God by the mass. By 



230 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

the spring of 1547 the whole of Southern Germany was reduced to 
obedience without a blow being struck. 

§ 335. In the mean time, John Frederick had repulsed the troops 
of Maurice, taken possession of his own territories with but little 
trouble, and conquered the greater part of Albertine Saxony as far as 
Dresden and Leipsic. Wherever he went he Avas received with ac- 
clamations by the Protestant part of the population, and it would not 
have been difficult for him to have collected a considerable force and 
to have bidden defiance to the enemies of the evangelical doctrines ; 
but John Frederick was not an enterprising man, and despite the 
ban, respect for the emperor was not yet extinguished in his pious 
heart, — he rejected the proffered aid. Maurice in his need invoked 
the assistance of the emperor. The latter hastened with his army 
into Bavaria, in defiance of the gout, and, uniting his forces with 
those of Maurice and Ferdinand, marched against his enemy, who 
was posted on the Elbe with 6000 men. Upon the approach of the 
emperor, John Frederick wished to fall back upon the strong town of 
Wittemberg, until he could collect the scattered divisions of his 
army ; but the imperial force, 27,000 strong, crossed the Elbe under 
the guidance of a peasant, surprised the cavalry, who were engaged 
in a retreat, on a Sunday morning when the elector was attending 
Divine worship, and won an easy victory in the battle of Miihlberg. 
John Frederick, a heavy man, was wounded in the face and taken 
prisoner after a brave defence. In prison he displayed the serenity 
of soul which is the fruit of a good conscience and a firm trust in 
God. He heard the sentence of death that was pronounced upon 
him by the emperor with the greatest composure, and without even 
interrupting the game of chess in which he was engaged. But 
Charles did not venture to carry the sentence into execution. He 
proposed to change the punishment of death into that of imprison- 
ment for life, upon condition that John Frederick should give up his 
fortresses to the emperor, and surrender his territories, together with 
the electoral dignity, to Maurice. In this manner the electorship of 
Saxony passed from the line of Emest to that of Albert. 

It was now the turn of the landgraf of Hesse to be punished. 
Maurice and Joachim of Brandenbtu'g interceded for him and obtained 
the assurance, " that if he would make an unconditional surrender, 
apologize for his proceedings, and deliver up his castles, he should be 
punished neither with death nor with perpetual imprisonment." These 
conditions were afterwards modified during a personal interview, and 
the two princes assured the landgraf of the safety of his person and 
possessions. In reliance on this assurance, Philip, provided with a 
safe conduct, presented himself at Halle, where the imperial camp 
was posted. It was here that, after having asked pardon on his 
knees in the midst of a magnificent assembly,, he was invited to 



THE WAR OF RELIGION IN GERMANY. 231 

supper by the duke of Alba, and on going to tbe castle was retained 
prisoner in spite of all objections. Tbe emperor could not deny him- 
self the triumph of having his two greatest opponents in his power. 
He shortly afterwards left Saxony and took his prisoners with him. 
This proceeding was the first occasion of a coolness between Maurice 
and the emperor. 

§ 336. In the mean while, the Council of Trent, which was opened 
on the 13th of December, 1545, had held its first deliberations. But 
as the proceedings were carried on under the guidance of the papal 
legates, and the chief part of the assembly consisted of the regular 
clergy and the uncompromising adherents of the pope, the resolutions 
assumed such a shape that the Protestants saw in them rather a 
widening of the previous divisions than any approach to a reconcilia- 
tion. This course was highly displeasing to the emperor, who hoped 
now to have brought about that unity of faith which had so long been 
wished for ; he remonstrated, and wished the resolutions to be kept 
secret, as he had just brought the Protestant Estates to promise that 
they would submit themselves to the Council, if the points already 
determined upon might be reconsidered. But Paul III., who saw 
clearly that the emperor cherished the wish of limiting the power of 
the pope, and of introducing such reforms into the Catholic Church 
that the Protestants should no longer hesitate to join her communion, 
not only allowed the resolutions to become known, but removed the 
Council to Bologna. The emperor was extremely irritated at this ; 
he forbade the clergy to leave Trent, but could only retain the smaller 
number, and for the purpose of paving the way to a reunion of the 
Church in Germany, he proclaimed an edict which set forth how 
matters should be conducted until the termination of the Council. 
This was done by the Augsburg Interim ; which, at first designed for 
both religious parties, was afterwards restricted to the Protestants. 
By this instrument, the use of the cup and the marriage of priests 
was permitted to the confessors of the evangelical Church ; an attempt 
was made to approach their opinions on the doctrines of justification, 
the mass, &c, by the use of indefinite modes of expression ; but in 
the celebration of Divine worship and in the ceremonies, the old 
usages were retained. This Interim met with great opposition, less 
from the Protestant princes than from the towns and preachers. The 
latter could not be prevailed upon to receive a religion that was 
offensive to their consciences, either by deprivation of their offices or 
by loss of their property or freedom. Driven from their posts, they 
left their homes and household hearths to fly by secret paths to the 
north of G-ermany, where the Interim was utterly rejected. Nearly 
400 preachers became exiles ; Magdeburg, which was under the ban, 
afforded an asylum to the greater number. In Saxony also, the 
cradle of the Reformation, many preachers fled, from dislike to the 



232 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Leipsic Interim, by the composition of which Melancthon incurred 
the charge of weakness and want of courage. A multitude of pamph- 
lets, satires, satirical poems, and woodcuts, proceeded from Magde- 
burg, which were intended to bring down hatred and contempt upon 
the Interim and its originators. 

§ 337. At the moment when the emperor believed himself to be 
on the point of attainiug the object of his wishes ; when the Council 
had been again removed to Trent, and even attended by some of the 
Protestant Estates ; when every circumstance seemed to combine to 
raise him to the position of temporal head of Christendom in the 
sense in which the term was understood in the middle ages, wheu 
he already cherished the. thought of having his son elected as his 
successor, and thus rendering the imperial throne hereditary in his 
family, — he suddenly found an unexpected opponent in the man to 
whom he had been hitherto indebted for his triumphs — in Maurice 
of Saxony. This sagacious prince saw plainly in what a perilous 
position the civil and religious liberties of G-ermany would stand if 
Charles shoidd conduct his plans to a successful issue ; he saw clearly 
that he had incurred the hate of all Protestants by his treachery to 
the common cause, since he had undertaken in the name of the 
emperor to prosecute the ban against Magdeburg, and had already 
commenced the siege of the city, where alone the pure word of the 
Gospel had found an asylum. He could only restore his lost repu- 
tation by a great and daring action. He concluded a secret alliance 
with several German princes, and assured himself of the aid of the 
French king, Henry II., by a treaty, in virtue of which the latter was 
permitted to occupy the towns of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, without 
infringement of the rights of the empire. The chivalrous markgraf, 
Albert of Brandenberg Culnbach, conducted the negotiation. Upon 
this, Maurice granted pardon and the free exercise of religion to 
Magdeburg, which immediately submitted. "Warnings were sent to 
the emperor, who was at that time in Insbruck ; but Maurice, who was 
a master in the art of deception, knew how to dissipate all suspicions 
as they arose in his mind, and Charles, who was practised in the 
intrigues of Spain and Italy, thought it impossible that he should be 
outwitted by a German. Maurice suddenly advanced 
with three divisions of his army into the south, took 
possession of Augsburg and marched into the Tyrol. He was already 
approaching Insbruck with the purpose of making the emperor 
prisoner, when a mutiny among the German peasants afforded the 
latter an opportunity for escape. The Tridentine Council was broken 
up in confusion, and Charles, after setting the imprisoned elector, 
John Frederick, at liberty, fled during the night, ill with the gout 
and disheartened, over the snow-covered mountains of the Tyrol into 
Carinthia; leaving to his brother Ferdinand the difficult task of 



THE WAR OF RELIGION IN GERMANY. 

establishing peace. Ferdinand immediately concluded the treaty of 
Passau with the Protestant princes, by which unconditional religious 
liberty was granted to the adherents of the Augsburg Confession, the 
Interim was abolished, the Protestants were declared independent of 
the Council of Trent, and the landgraf of Hesse was set at liberty. 
A permanent peace and amnesty was at the same time decided 
upon. 

§ 338. The treaty of Passau was the last work of Maurice. When 
his former confederate, Albert of Brandenburg, refused to accede to 
it, and continued his wars and robberies in Lower Saxony, 
Maurice marched against him to compel him to pea^e. A 
battle was fought near Sivershausen. The active Maurice was vic- 
torious, but he received a gun-shot wound in the wild confusion of 
the battle, of which he died two days after, in the flower of his manly 
strength. He was a man of rare qualities, "prudent and secret, 
enterprising and energetic." Two years after his death, the Eeligious 
Peace of Augsburg was concluded, by which the Protestant Estates 
who followed the Augsburg Confession were not only assured of full 
liberty of conscience and religion, but also of political rights equal to 
those enjoyed by the Catholics, and the continued possession of the 
confiscated ecclesiastical property. A free right of departure was 
permitted to subjects who did not follow the religion of the electors ; 
and a free toleration for those that remained. The demand made by 
the adherents of the ancient faith, that in future those of the clergy 
who should join the new Church should lose their incomes and offices, 
occasioned the most vehement disputes. As it was impossible to 
come to an agreement, the point was left undecided, and admitted 
as a spiritual reservation into the laws of peace — " a seed of bloody 
contests." 

§ 339. This religious peace frustrated the most zealous attempts of 
the emperor to restore the unity of the Church, and deprived him of 
the interest he had hitherto taken in the affairs of the world. Op- 
pressed with discontent and bodily suffering, he embraced the resolu- 
tion of renouncing his government, and of passing the remainder of 
his days in quiet retirement and monastic penance. "With this object 
he made over to his son Philip, at a solemn assembly at Brussels, 
first, the Netherlands, and a short time after, the kingdoms of Spain 
and Naples, together with the New "World ; he committed the govern- 
ment of the Austrian states and the affairs of Germany, however, to 
his brother Perdinand. After this he retired to the west of Spain, 
where he had had a residence built near the convent of St. Juste, on 
the pleasant declivity of a hill, surrounded by plantations of trees. 
He lived here for two years in quiet retirement, busied with the 
practices of religion and with pious contemplation. In the mean 
time, Prederick I. received the imperial throne of Germany by the 



234 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

election of the princes, after he had pledged himself to observe the 
Peace of Religion, — an engagement he honestly fulfilled. 

4. PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION" THROUGH EUROPE. 
a. LUTHERANTSM AND CALVINISM. 

§ 340. The greatest divisions arose in Germany where the move- 
ments in the Church had taken their origin, in consequence of the 
Reformation. The Lutheran form of worship strove long with the 
Catholic for the mastery. The former extended itself gradually from 
Saxony and Hesse over the neighbouring countries, acquired the 
supremacy in Northern Germany, made triumphant progress in 
Swabia and Franconia, and opened itself a path from Strasburg into 
Alsacia and Lorraine. The doctrines of Luther had penetrated at an 
early period to the Vistula and the shores of the Baltic, where the 
Grand Master of the German order (§ 227), Albert of Brandenburg, 
pressed upon by the Poles and deserted by the emperor and empire, 
had joined the evangelical Church, converted Prussia into an heredi- 
tary dukedom, and acknowledged the suzerainship of Poland. The 
same thing happened in Courland and Livonia, with the Head of the 
order of the Sword. The Catholic form of worship found its most 
zealous partisans in the dukes of Bavaria, in the royal house of Aus- 
tria, in the spiritual electors, and in the prince-bishops. Ingolstadt 
was an active seminary for the ancient faith. Nevertheless, as the 
two emperors, Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II., both disdained to do 
violence to the consciences of their subjects, the evangelical doctrines 
soon obtained numerous adherents in the hereditary possessions of 
Austria. The Protestants obtained religious toleration for themselves, 
and built several churches in the archduchy of Austria, in Carinthia, 
and Styria. In Hungary and Transylvania the Reformation made 
such progress that the evangelical party outnumbered their opponents 
and obtained religious freedom and equal political rights with the 
Catholics. In Bohemia, the old Hussites (TJtraquists) mostly em- 
braced the Lutheran doctrines. But numerous as were the treaties 
that guaranteed the rights of Protestants in the Austrian dominions, 
they were disregarded by later rulers, who restored the Catholic State 
Church to the pre-eminence. 

The reformed Church that originated in Switzerland, also found its 
way into Germany at an early period. It is true that the doctrines 
of Zwingle were only received and maintained by a few towns in the 
south of Germany ; but when Calvin in Geneva seized upon the 
principles of Zwingle, and fashioned them into a complete sys- 
tem of doctrine by uniting them with his own views, the reformed 
Church in Germany gained a constant succession of adherents. 
Frederick III. introduced this system into his ow r n land from the 
Palatinate, and ordered Ursinus and Olevianus to draw up the 



PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION THROUGH EUROPE. OQ5 

Heidelberg Catechism, a widely-extended compendium of 
Calvin's doctrine ; the same thing happened in Hesse, 
Bremen, and Brandenburg. Even Melancthon and his disciples 
(Philippists, Cryptocalvinists) were convinced in their hearts of the 
truth of Calvin's views. The former so embittered the evening of his 
life by promulgating these opinions, that he sank into his grave 
calumniated and full of sorrow, and his disciples brought 
persecution and imprisonment upon themselves in Saxony. 
The Form of Concord, a confession of faith that was subscribed about 
1580, by ninety-six of the Lutheran Estates of the empire, was in- 
tended to have restored harmony among the German Protestants, 
but it merely confirmed the division between the Calvinists and 
Lutherans, and increased the unhappy animosity of one party against 
the other. 

§ 341. Switzerland also received evangelical confessions of faith 
as well as the Catholic doctrines, only the system of Zwingle that 
was received in the greater German cantons (§ 326), differed less 
from the doctrine of Calvin which was predominant in Erench 
Switzerland, than did that of Luther from the doctrine of the 
reformed Church. John Calvin, a learned refugee from Erance, 
introduced the Reformation and the confederation into Geneva, a 
town delightfully situated on the frontiers of Savoy and 
Erance, and then, like the lawgivers of antiquity, exer- 
cised the greatest influence on the government, the religion, the 
manners, and the education of the city, till his death in 1564. Calvin 
was a man of great intellect and moral power ; severe to others and 
to himself, and hostile to all worldly enjoyments, — he acquired a 
command over men by the reverence that was due to his strong and 
pure will. The doctrine of Calvin is impressed with the character of 
its originator, — severity and simplicity. In matters of faith he ad- 
heres to Zwingle only so far as the latter embraces the severe views 
of Augustine (§ 174), and holds that men are incapable of doing 
good by their own wills. Calvin, like Zwingle, goes back to the 
primitive apostolic times, and commands the greatest simplicity in 
ceremonies and forms of worship. Images, ornaments, organs, candles, 
crucifixes, all are banished from the churches ; the service consists in 
prayer, preaching, and the singing of psalms, which Calvin's faithful 
fellow-minister, Theodore Beza, had translated into Erench ; there is 
no Church feast except the rigorously observed Sunday (Sabbath). 
The constitution of the Calvinistic Church is a republican synodial 
government. The congregation, represented by freely elected elders 
(presbytery), exercises the power of the Church, chooses the mini- 
sters, watches over morals by means of the elders, administers the 
discipline and punishments of the Church and the distribution of 
alms. The ministers and a portion of the elders constitute the 



2SG THB MODERN EPOCH. 

synod, from -whence the country churches receive then laws. Their 
severity of morals occasionally induced the Calvinists to wage war 
against lawful amusements, such as the theatre, dancing, and the 
more refined pleasures of society ; for this reason their doctrines 
found less acceptance among the higher than in the middle classes. 
§ 342. The Calvinistic doctrines extended themselves from Geneva 
over the flourishing towns of Southern Prance, where they 
soon numbered so many adherents that they were able to 
wage war for many years with the dominant Church. The French 
court Avas for some time hesitating which form of religion it should 
adopt, political motives swayed the decision in favour of the Catholic 
Church. Commands were now issued against " the so-called reformed 
religion," Calvinistic ministers were given over to the flames, and an 
attempt was made to prevent the diffusion of their doctrine by perse- 
cution and punishment. Calvinism penetrated into the 
Netherlands from France and Switzerland, where, after 
many struggles, it became victorious in the Northern provinces 
(Holland). At the synod of Dort (a.d. 1618), the views of the 
Arminians, who wished to give a milder form to Calvin's severe doc- 
trine of predestination, were condemned, and the Augustine doctrine 
of election maintained. The chiefs of the Arminians, particularly the 
deserving statesman, Oldenbarnveld, and the distinguished historian, 
Hugo Grotius, were punished, the one by death, the other by im- 
prisonment (§ 3G0). In Scotland, the evangelical doc- 
trines were long suppressed by the court and the clergy, 
and many courageous confessors perished in the flames. The regent, 
Mary of Guise, sprung from a French family, which was zealously 
devoted to the Romish Church, in conjunction with Cardinal Beaton, 
suppressed the innovators by severity. But when the cardinal had 
fallen in his own house beneath the blows of a troop of conspirators, 
and the regent had died after a three years' contest with the people 
who were striving for the Gospel, the rude preacher, John Knox, 
who had known Calvin in Geneva, succeeded in rendering the 
reformed doctrines triumphant. The doctrines, the form of worship, 
and the synodial constitution of the Calvinistic Church, were intro- 
duced into Scotland by a resolution of the parliament, the mass for- 
bidden as idolatrous, under penalty of fine and death, and the goods 
of the Church confiscated. Monasteries, cathedrals, and treasures of 
art were destroyed with a blind fury. At a later period, the Scottish 
Church received the name of Presbyterian, from its assemblies. In 
England similar principles, entertained by the Puritans, succumbed 
to the power of the High Church ; but they were diffused by numerous 
sects, and received their fullest development on the free shores of 
North America. 



PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION THROUGH EUROPE. 037 
b. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ANGLICAN" CHTJECH. 

§ 343. In England, the disciples of Luther were at first bloodily 
persecuted, and King Henry YIII. obtained such favour with the 
court of Koine by a learned controversial work against Luther on the 
subject of the seven sacraments, that it conferred upon him the title 
Henry VIII °^ Defender of the Faith. But Henry's attachment to 
a.d. 1509— the pope was converted into hatred when Clement VII. 
1547. refused to separate him from his Spanish wife, Catherine, 

an aunt of the emperor Charles V. Some internal scruples respecting 
the validity of his marriage with Catherine, who had been the wife of 
his departed brother, and a wish to unite himself to the lovely Anna 
Boleyn, at length induced Henry to attempt the desired separation 
by a rupture with Kome. Supported by the opinions of native and 
foreign universities and of many learned bodies as to the invalidity 
of his marriage, he had had himself divorced from Catherine and mar- 
ried to Anne by Thomas Cranmer, the new bishop of Canterbury ; he 
then compelled the clergy to acknowledge him as the head of the 
English Church, and had a number of acts passed by the parliament 
by which the pope's authority and influence was destroyed in En- 
gland. The king then set about effecting such alterations in the 
Church as appeared to him to be useful or which suited his caprice, 
with unexampled severity and arbitrariness. The numerous monas- 
teries were violently dissolved, the monks and nuns scarcely protected 
from hunger, and the conventual property either united to the crown 
or bestowed upon, courtiers . The tomb of Becket with its rich altar was 
desecrated and plundered, and the memory of the ancient saint (§ 275) 
turned to ridicule by a ludicrous ceremony. The flames by which Lu- 
therans as well as papists were consumed were lighted by the wooden 
images of the saints. On the other hand, he left the remaining insti- 
tutions of the Catholic Church untouched, and commanded, by the 
statute of the six Bloody Articles, the observance, under penalty of 
death, of celibacy, auricular confession, monastic vows, low mass, tran- 
substantiation, and the withholding of the cup. The venerable bishop 
Eisher and the intellectual chancellor, Thomas More, the author of 
the "Utopia," died upon the scaffold because they did not approve 
the innovations in the Church. Enraged at this, the pope at length 
fulminated a violent anathema against Henry and his adherents at 
the moment when the discontent at the dissolution of the cloisters 
had produced an insurrection among the peasantry in the north of 
the kingdom, in which monks marched at the head of the bands. 
Upon this, Henry condemned the friends and relations of Cardinal 
Pole, who had prepared the anathema, to die upon the scaffold or 
gallows, and delivered over abbots and monks in the dress of their 
order to the executioner. 



288 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

§ 344. But the despotism and sensuality of the king were most 
clearly displayed in his treatment of his wives. Scarcely had the 
divorced Cathei'ine died, far from the court, a victim to her sorrows 
and her wrongs, before her rival, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded by the 
command of her jealous husband. His third wife, the young and 
gentle Joanna Seymour, died a few days after giving birth to the 
delicate Edward ; upon which, Henry suffered himself to be seduced 
by the advice of his chancellor and by a portrait of Holbein's intosueing 
for the hand of a German princess, Anna of Cleves. But neither her 
figure nor her disposition suited the amorous king, who accordingly 
procured another divorce upon grounds altogether frivolous. Cathe- 
rine Howard, Henry's fifth wife, retained her affection for a former 
lover after her elevation, and expiated her want of faith upon the 
scaffold; and Catherine Parr, the last of his queens, had only her 
own shrewdness to thank that she did not fall a victim to her zeal 
for the Reformation. Since the days of Nero and Domitian, there 
had hardly been a monarch who had surrendered himself so completeby 
to the promptings of a despotic nature, a passion for blood, and a 
tyrannical will. Even on his death-bed he issued orders for 
executions. 

Edward VI. § 345. At the time of his father's death, Edward VI. 
a.d. 1547— numbered but six years ; Henry had in consequence ap- 
pointed a council to conduct the government during his 
son's minority. In this council, Edward's maternal uncle — the duke 
of Somerset, and the Archbishop Cranmer, attained the greatest 
authority. The former, raised to the office of protector of England, 
gradually got the whole power of the state into his own hands, and 
favoured the establishment of an Anglican Church which had been 
undertaken with prudence and moderation by his friend Cranmer. 
This consists of a mixture of Catholic and Protestant elements. 
Public worship was accommodated to the Book of Common Prayer 
in the English language which was compiled from the ancient Mass 
books ; the Communion was administered in both kinds ; the abolish- 
ing of ceUbacy, and the confession of faith in the thirty-nine Articles 
is in conformity with other Protestant Churches ; on the other hand, 
the episcopal constitution, the continuance in the use of coloured 
robes during divine worship, and a few ecclesiastical statutes, call 
the Roman Catholic system io mind, only instead of the pope, the 
king is the head of the Church, and the bishops and archbishops are 
appointed by him. 

Somerset made many enemies by his ambition, who first procured 
his fall, and at length his execution. Warwick, earl of Northumber- 
land, the ambitious chief of the opposite party, stepped into his place, 
and exercised the same unlimited authority over the weak king and 
the empire as his predecessor had done. For the purpose of prolong- 



PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION THROUGH EUROPE. 239 

ing his sway, he persuaded the dying Edward to alter the will of his 
father, by appointing as his successor, Jane Gray, a niece of Henry 
VIII., who was disposed to the evangelical doctrines, instead of his 
Catholic sister, Mary. But hatred to the ambitious Northumberland, 
whose son, Dudley, was the husband of Jane Gray, and the hereditary 
reverence for the legitimate inheritor, operated in favour of Mary. 
Mary Tudor, She brought the people over to her side by the assurance 

a.d. 1553— that nobody should be disturbed on account of his re- 
1558 • 

ligion, and succeeded in gaining the throne. Northum- 
berland died on the scaffold. Dudley and the classically accomplished 
Jane Gray, who was not less versed in the writings of Plato than in 
the Bible, after pining for some time in prison, were the victims of a 
similar fate. 

§ 346. Mary did not remain true to her promise. Bred up in 
the Catholic faith, for which her mother, Catherine, had suffered, she 
looked upon the restoration of papacy and the ancient Church forms 
as the most important of her duties as a ruler. She had the Church 
Eeform of Edward VI. abolished by act of Parliament, and adopted 
measures, in conjunction with Cardinal Pole whom she raised to the 
archiepiscopal chair of Canterbury, for the extirpation of heresy and 
the restoration of the old system. The refractory bishops were de- 
posed ; Cranmer and two of his most zealous coadjutors given over 
to the flames, and the fires of martyrdom lighted all over the kingdom. 
To neglect attending Mass was to put life in perd. Crowds of re- 
fugees fled over the seas to seek for refuge in Germany and Switzer- 
land. "When Mary gave her hand to the fanatical Philip of Spain 
the persecution waxed hotter. But grief at the evident dislike of 
her husband, melancholy and misanthropy shortened her days. She 
died at the moment when she was deceiving herself with the idle 
hope that she was about to present a Catholic successor to the 
nation. 

Her half-sister, Elizabeth, the daughter of the unfortunate Anne 
Boleyn, exchanged the residence she had hitherto occupied in the 
Tower, where she had passed a troublous youth in the midst of sor- 
row and danger, for the royal palace, and restored, by the Act of 
Uniformity, the Eeformation that had been established under Ed- 
ward VI. The Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles 
again resumed their authority ; and Elizabeth exercised the influence 
which she possessed as the spiritual head of the Church, in establish- 
ing the Court of High Commission. It was in vain that the exiles 
on their return home hoped to induce the queen to undertake a 
thorough Eeformation on the model of the Calvinistic Church. 
Elizabeth's lofty spirit, and her love for religious ceremonial and 
ecclesiastical pomp, despised the simplicity and popular equality of 
the Calvinists, who, from their insisting upon the purification of the 



24,0 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Church, were called Puritans. When these men found there was no 
hope for the reception of their doctrines into the Anglican Church, 
they separated themselves as nonconformists, and established a reli- 
gious system of their own, with presbyteries and synods, a religious 
service from which art and poetry were banished, and a system of 
Church discipline in which every earthly pleasure was a sin. Perse- 
cution was soon let loose against the Puritans, under which they 
became still more gloomy and morose, and at length increased to a 
dangerous party. 

C. THE REFORMATION IN THE THREE SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOMS. 

§ 347. In the sixteenth century a complete revolution in the state 
of affairs took place in the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Christian 
II., the last king of the united empire (§ 296), irritated the nobility 
to such an extent by his severity and cruelty, that insurrections 
broke out at the same time both in Denmark and Sweden, in conse- 
quence of which the union of Calmar was dissolved and the evangelical 
Church obtained the supremacy. Gustavus Yasa, a courageous 
youth, endowed with the valour and wisdom of the Stures, who were 
his relations, was the originator of this ecclesiastical and political 
revolution in Sweden, and the founder of a vigorous race of 
monarchs. He was carried into Denmark as a hostage by Chris- 
tian II. From thence, however, he soon found an opportunity to 
escape into Lubeck, where he was not only protected but provided 
with money, and encoui'aged with promises of the liberation of his 
. r9 „ native country. In the same year in which the slaughter 
of Stockholm produced a universal horror of the Danish 
government, Gustavus landed on his native shores. In the midst of 
a thousand dangers and adventures, he escaped the pursuits of 
Christian's emissaries, who were perpetually at his heels, by his own 
courage and the fidelity of his countrymen, till at length he found 
aid and protection from the rude inhabitants of Northern Dalecarlia. 
With a band of hardy peasants he conquered Falun, repulsed the 
troops of the Danes and then* allies, and took TJpsala. The fame of 
his name and the attractive call of liberty soon resounded through 
all lands and attracted many warriors to his side. Supported by the 
Liibeckcrs with troops, money, and artfilery, he compelled the Danish 
garrison to retreat, and then, after having been elected king by the 

, ~„ Diet of Streinmas, he held his entrv into Stockholm. At 
June 1523. 

first, the new kingdom of Sweden . remained an elective 

monarchy, till twenty years later the crown was declared by the Diet 

to be hereditary in the male line of Vasa. But as the 

possessions of the throne had been so dilapidated by 

neglect as not to be sufficient to support the expenditure, the new 

kingly dignity could not be supported with honour except by an 



PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION THROUGH EUROPE. 2il 

augmentation of the kingly revenue. For this, the Reformation 
afforded a welcome opportunity. The people, instructed in the 
Lutheran doctrines by the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri, 
willingly accepted the new faith, and the Diet placed the possessions 
of the clergy, who during the war had sided with the Danes, and 
shown no interest in the independence of their country, at the dis- 
posal of the king. Grustavus, supported by this resolution, 
gradually introduced the Reformation into the whole 
country, and deprived the Church of the greater part of its posses- 
sions for the purpose of attaching them to the crown. The nobility, 
who were enriched by the proceeding, supported the undertaking. 
The bishops, who, after a long resistance, submitted to the new sys- 
tem, remained Estates of the empire and heads of the Church, but 
were dependent upon the king, and held in check by consistories. 

§ 348. A similar revolution had in the mean time taken place in 
Denmark. Frederick I., acknowledged as king by the nobility and 
people, sought, by supporting the evangelical doctrine, to strengthen 
himself against his rival, Christian II., who, although at first 
favourable to the Reformation, had afterwards united himself to 
the emperor and the pope for the purpose of regaining possession 
of his states. In the same time in which Frederick admitted Pro- 
testants to equal civil rights with Catholics at the Diet of Oden- 
see, and established the Danish Church's independence of Rome, 
Christian II. made an attack upon Denmark from Norway ; but 
was taken prisoner, and compelled to pine for sixteen years in 
a gloomy tower, with no other companion than a Norwegian 
Christian III., dwarf. Under Christian III., the son of Frederick I., the 
a.d. 1534 — Lutheran form of worship attained a complete triumph 
in Denmark also. The clergy lost the greater part of 
their possessions to the crown and the nobility, and the bishops, 
whose titles were retained in the Scandinavian kingdoms, fell into 
complete dependence upon the government. In Norway, the new 
Church was quietly established by the peasantry; but in Iceland, 
the Episcopal party fell with the sword in their hands. The Swedish 
and Danish nobility gained great wealth, power, and privileges by 
the Reformation. 

§ 349. Grustavus Vasa had attempted to establish Sweden's pros- 
perity by wholesome laws, and by the encouragement of trade and 
industry ; but evil times came upon the land under the government 
of his sons. Erich XIV. was of so passionate a disposition that he 
Erich XIV., at length became insane. "Whilst in this state, he mur- 
a.d. 1560— dered with his own hand several members of the family 
1568 ' of Sture, and caused all the nobles to tremble in antici- 

pation of a similar fate ; which induced his brothers to place him in 
confinement, and at length to send him out of the world by poison. 



0[0 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

John III ^ s brother, John III., a weak-minded prince of unstable 
a.d. 1508 — character, succeeded to the government. Led astray by 
1592. j^ s w jfg j a r igid Catholic and the daughter of a Polish 

prince, and by a Jesuit who lived secretly in Stockholm as an ambas- 
sador, John attempted again to introduce the ancient form of religion 
into his kingdom, and consented that his son Sigmund, who was to 
be king both of Sweden and Poland, should be brought up as a 
Catholic. His scheme proved abortive from the resistance of the 
Swedish people to the Catholic ceremonies ; he himself afterwards 
repented of his attempt, when his second wife exerted herself in 
favour of the evangelical doctrine. But the attachment to the Ca- 
tholic Chm-ch proved of great detriment to his son, the Polish king, 
Sigmund III. For when he refused compliance with the resolution 
of the Diet, that the evangelical-Lutheran religion shoidd be solely 
predominant and alone tolerated in Sweden, his uncle, Charles of 
Sudermania, was named regent. It was in vain that Sigmund at- 
tempted to defend his rights by force of arms, he was 
defeated by his uncle ; whereupon the Diet required him 
either to renounce popery, and to govern his hereditary kingdom in 
person ; or to send his son to Sweden, that he might be brought up in 
the religion of the country. "When Signmnd refused compliance 
with this demand, Charles IX. received the crown he had long been 
striving for, and a new law of succession secured it to his family. 

§ 350. At this time, a war arose between Sweden and Poland. 

Charles IX., This war, which after Charles's death was inherited by his 

a.d. 1600 — SO n, Grustavus Adolphus, terminated to the advantage of 

Sweden, who soon united Livonia and a part of Prussia 

to Finland and Esthonia, her other provinces on the Baltic. 

From this time the power of Poland gradually decayed. An at- 
tempt at a reformation of the Church, which would have been at- 
tended by a renovation of the state, and a more intimate connexion 
with neighbouring countries, was suppressed by a selfish nobility, 
who thought of nothing but increasing their own power and privileges. 
It was only a few persecuted and fugitive teachers of the new doc- 
trines that found protection and toleration in Poland. They were 
opposed to the Catholic Poles under the comprehensive term of Dis- 
sidents, and succeeded, after many struggles, in obtaining toleration 
for their religion, and an equality of civil rights ; possessions in which 
they were afterwards seriously disturbed. Several opinions found 
toleration in Poland that had been rejected by the Beformers as 
unorthodox. Among these, may be mentioned those entertained by 
the sect of Socinians (Unitarians) founded by the Italian brothers, 
Socinus, who denied the Divine nature of Christ and the doctrine of 
the Trinity. 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 043 

d. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

§ 351. Traces of the Reformation displayed themselves both in 
Spain and Italy, but were prevented from extending partly by the 
character of the people, and partly by the severity of the inquisition • 
the suspected died in frightful dungeons, or at the stake. Among 
the confessors of the new doctrine were found the most illustrious 
authors and men of learning, who, for the most part, took refuge 
abroad. Some adopted principles that were rejected as heretical even 
by the Reformers ; thus, the two Italian brothers, Socinus (§ 350) ; 
and the Spaniard, Servetus, who was burnt to death at Geneva, at 
the suggestion of Calvin, for holding unorthodox opinions on the 
subject of the Trinity (a.d. 1553). 

The heads and leaders of the Catholic Church did not give up the 
thought of suppressing the new doctrines : wherever it was in their 
power, they sought to attain this object by persecution and violence ; 
and when this was not practicable, they opposed and impeded their 
Adrian VI., diffusion in every possible way. Almost all the popes, 
a.d. 1522, even those who, like Adrian VI. and Paul III., were 

1523. ... 

Paul III. convinced of the prevailing abuses of the Church, and 

a.d. 1543— meditated plans for their removal, displayed great severity 
Paul IV against the Protestants. Thus Paul IV., an octogenarian 

a.d. 1555— and a gloomy monk, provoked the people to such a degree, 
p 559 - that on the day of his death they mutilated his statues, 

a.d. 1559— and burnt down the house of the inquisition. His suc- 
1565. cesser, Pius IV., brought to a termination the twice 

interrupted Council of Trent, the third assembling of which com- 
menced with the January of 1562. The resolutions of this Council 
(in which the Catholics see their own Reformation), form the foun- 
dation of the Catholic Church. The religious doctrines that had 
hitherto been regarded as orthodox were here recognized as infallible, 
and embodied in expressions as indefinite as possible ; a purer code 
of morals was established, the Church discipline improved, and a more 
rigorous supervision of the clergy established. The Council of Trent, 
which was gradually received in all Catholic countries, is the final con- 
clusion of Catholic doctrine ; from this time, no more synods have been 
held. In this manner every attempt at innovation was prevented, and 
the character of stability impressed upon Catholicism ; whilst, on the 
contrary, the essence of Protestantism is development and progress. 
Gregory XIII Gregory XIII., who gave the calendar, which had fallen 
a.d. 1572 — into confusion, its present improved arrangement, by 
1585. passing at once from the 18th of February to the 1st of 

March, ordered a Te Deum to be sung for the extirpation of the 
enemies of Christ when he heard the intelligence of the night of St. 

n 2 



244. THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Bartholomew (§ 363). The most remarkable prince of the Church 

„. . , r during the whole century, was Sixtus V., who, from the 

Sixtus V., to niTi- i 

a.d. 1585— condition of a poor shepherd boy, had risen to be a Fran- 

lo9 °- ciscan, inquisitor, cardinal, and at length, pope. He was 

a man of a strong and imperious nature, who maintained the discipline 
of the Church with inexorable severity, erected several remarkable 
buildings, drew forth the gigantic works of antiquity from their rub- 
bish, and attempted to restore the ancient splendour to the papal chair. 

§ 352. The attempts of the popes to suppress the Eeformation, or 
at least to prevent its diffusion, found their chief support in the order 
of Jesuits, which was founded by Ignatius Loyola, a 
Spanish nobleman of excitable imagination and enthu- 
siastic temperament. Affected by the histories of the saints, which 
he read during the healing of a wound, Ignatius renounced the pro- 
fession of soldier, to which he had hitherto belonged, and accom- 
plished a toilsome pilgrimage, with prayers and penance, to the Holy 
Sepulchre. After his return, he acquired, with incredible perseverance, 
the education in Avhich he was deficient, in Salamanca and Paris ; 
and then, together with six associates, swore vipon the host not only 
to be true to the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi- 
ence, but to allow the object of their efforts to be determined on by 
the pope, and then to submit themselves to his decision with uncon- 
ditional compliance. A short time after, they prostrated themselves 
at the feet of the Roman pontiff, and obtained a confirmation of the 
new order, which received the name of the Society of Jesus. Igna- 
tius became the first general of the order ; but it is not to him, but 
to his successor, the Spaniard, Lainez, that the Society of Jesus is 
indebted for its artfully designed constitution. 

This constitution was military-monarchical. The superintendents 
of the provinces — the provincials, were subject to the general in Home, 
and under these were again a multitude of heads in various steps and 
gradations. Ohedience and rigid subordination were the soul of the 
alliance. All the members were most heedfully watched over, and 
were compelled to tear asunder all the bands that connected thern 
with the world. Postulants were required to pass through a long 
period of probation, during which, the talents and disposition of every 
individual were minutely scrutinized, so that he might be devoted 
to his most appropriate sphere of action. The Jesuits, who were 
endowed with great privileges, soon attained a vast and multi- 
farious activity. The chief aim of the order was to oppose Pro- 
testantism, and to suppress the freedom of inquiry that had been 
awakened by the Eeformation. They attempted these objects by 
a variety of ways ; they endeavoured to lead back the adherents 
of the new faith into the bosom of the ancient Church by persuasion 



THE TIMES OF PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 245 

and seduceinent ; the confessional was made use of to induce princes 
and men in authority to oppose the Reformation, and to put limits to 
the freedom of belief ; and by the education of youth, which they had 
known how to get into their own hands, they sought to bring up the 
young in their own principles. The order was enriched by presents 
and legacies, and this wealth facilitated the erection of Jesuitical 
seminaries, which, plentifully provided with every thing that was 
requisite, imparted instruction gratuitously, and thus attracted many 
of the necessitous. Moreover, the object aimed at by the instruction 
given by the Jesuits was not a free development of the mind, but 
only the acquirement of knowledge that might be serviceable in life. 
It might rather be called training than education. Sciences were 
presented in a certain contracted form, and free speculation was pre- 
vented. Readiness in the Latin language, and an acquaintance with a 
few sciences that were of practical utdity, were the aim of the Jesuitical 
education ; the means — severe discipline and the excitement of am- 
bition : philosophy, on the other hand, history, and every thing that 
directs men's minds to more elevated or comprehensive views, was 
either banished or taught with restrictions. But what drew down 
the curses of the people on the Jesuitical order was, that by its dan- 
gerous morality it became the destroyer of truth and faith, and the 
disseminator of malicious and false principles. The revolting doctrine 
that the end sanctifies the means, and that words and oaths might be 
rendered invalid by a mental reservation, were brought into use by 
the Jesuits in a most audacious manner. 

5. THE TIMES OE EHILLP II. (a.D. 1556 — 1598) AND ELIZABETH 

(a.d. 1558—1603). 

§ 353. Philip II. of Spain was a gloomy and misanthropical prince, 
who proposed three objects to himself as the aims of his existence, — 
the increase of his power, the extirpation of Protestantism, and the 
annihilation of liberty and popular rights. In the attainment of 
these ends he sacrificed the happiness of his people, the prosperity of 
his kingdom, and the affection of his subjects and nearest relations. 
His chivalrous half-brother, Don Juan, who defeated the 
Turks in the sea-engagement at Lepanto, was surrounded 
by the suspicious king with such a web of falsehood, intrigue, and 
espionage, and so fettered in all his undertakings, that grief and 
vexation plunged him into an early grave. Philip's son, the im- 
petuous and passionate Don Carlos, died in the dungeons of the in- 
quisition, — that mighty spiritual court, that, under Philip, became 
the terror and horror of the people. By means of this horrible inqui- 
sition, and the dreadful autos da fe, he was indeed successful in 
destroying every trace of heresy in Spain and Naples, and in depriv- 
ing the people of their freedom ; but he at the same time annihilated 



246 T1IE MODERN EPOCH. 

tlie prosperity, the wealth, and the national greatness of these coun- 
bries; and when he attempted to hend the Netherlands under the 
same yoke, that memorable contest burst forth, out of which liberty 
came forth triumphant. After a reign of twelve years, which proved 
the grave of Spain's greatness, and burdened the once rich land with 
an oppressive national debt, Philip tell a victim to a dreadful disease. 
He had a cruel executor of his tyrannical commands in Duke Alba. 
The curse of the people rests on the names of both. 

a. PORTUGAL TJNITEn WITH SPAIN. 

§ 354. Portugal had a similar fate with Spain. In both countries a 
powerful priesthood, supported by an absolute king, suppressed the 
spiritual movements of the people, and paralysed their powers. Pree- 
dom and rights were lost, and the ancient heroism, the bloom and 
the prosperity of an earlier period, disappeared beneath sloth and 
slavery. This was particularly the case when Portugal, by a gloomy 
fatality, was united to Spain. 

King Sebastian, a young man, and who had been educated by the 
priests in rigid faith and obedience to the Church and pope, under- 
took an expedition against the infidel Moors in Northern Africa, with 
the purpose of gratifying at once both his zeal for proselytism and his 
love of conquest. Pie commenced an impetuous attack, during the 
burning heat of an August day, upon the superior force 
of the enemy, in the plain of Alcassar, and suffered a 
dreadful defeat. 12,000 Christian warriors covered the field of battle ; 
Sebastian himself was among those who were missing, but his body 
could be no where discovered. The crown of Portugal descended to 
an ancieni relative ; and when he died, two years afterwards, without 
children, Philip II. of Spain made pretensions to the kingdom, and 
sent Duke Alba with an army against the Portuguese, who, out of 
national hatred and neighbourly jealousy, favoured the pretensions of 
a rival claimant, Antonio. But the latter was not in a position to 
contest his pretended hereditary claims against the superior power of 
Spain. lie was defeated and compelled to fly, upon which Lisbon 
and the whole country submitted to the Spaniards. Antonio, after a 
few unsuccessful attempts, died, poor and harassed by perpetual 
plots, in Paris ; and the false Sebastians that arose from time to time, 
and endeavoured to stir up the Portuguese against their detested 
neighbours, did not meet with the necessary support. The fourth 
Sebastian, who bj mam was regarded as the true one, ended his days 
a.d. 1580— m :| Spanish prison. The pernicious domination of Spain 
1640. over Portugal endured for sixty years. At the end of this 

period, the illustrious duke of Braganza succeeded in bringingthe crow □ 
into his own family. But in the meanwhile, the navy of Portugal had 
fallen into decay, and her foreign possessions passed into other hands. 



THE TIMES OP PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 04,7 

b. THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY IN THE NETHERLANDS. 

§ 355. The Netherlands, from time immemorial, had possessed 
chartered rights and liberties, among which, consent to taxation by 
the Estates of the country, an independent judicature, and the ex- 
clusion of Spanish troops and officials, occupied the most prominent 
place. These rights had been already occasionally infringed during the 
time of Charles V. ; but the love of the emperor for the Netherlander, 
among whom he had been born, and for whose manners and customs 
he retained an affection, prevented any greater hostilities. Philip, 
on the contrary, was a haughty Spaniard, who looked upon the 
Netherlands as a conquered country, and who perpetually violated 
their hereditary privileges. He appointed his half-sister, Margaret 
of Parma, a woman of masculine spirit, his vicegerent in Brussels ; 
but placed a state council at her side, in which a foreigner, Cardinal 
Granvella, was president, and sent a Spanish garrison into the coun- 
try. But the Netherlanders, many of whom were inclined to the 
evangelical doctrines, felt themselves most aggrieved, when the king, 
for the purpose of maintaining the pure faith, and the discipline of the 
Church, ordered the laws against heresy to be rendered more strin- 
gent, and appointed fourteen new bishops in addition to the four 
already existing. These regulations were intended to facilitate the 
gradual introduction of the Spanish inquisition ; and the Cardinal 
Granvella, who, as archbishop of Mechlin, had all the other bishoprics 
under him, already assumed the title of Grand-Inquisitor. All at- 
tempts of the patriotic party, at the head of which stood "William of 
Orange and Count Egmont, to induce the king by petitions to re- 
spect the institutions of the country, to mitigate the laws against 
heresy, and to allow freedom of belief, were ineffectual. Philip 
repUed, " that he would rather die a thousand times, than suffer the 
slightest change in religion." 

§ 356. It was among the burgher class alone that any disciples of 
the new Church were to be met with ; the nobility for the most part 
adhered to the ancient faith, but were resolute in opposing the in- 
November, quisition with all their power. With this object, about 
1565. 400 nobles subscribed the so-called Compromise, and 

drew up a petition for the repeal of the laws against heresy, and the 
discontinuance of the proceedings of the inquisition. When they 
presented themselves with this before the palace of the vice-regent, 
she fell into a state of agitation. One of the council who was stand- 
ing beside her exclaimed, that she should not be alarmed by these 
beggars (gueux), a word that was communicated to the confederates, 
and made use of by them as the sign of their alliance. They named them- 
selves Gueses, and from this time wore a medal round the neck, with 
the effigy of the king, and the inscription, " True to the wallet." The 



g48 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

petition remained without result. Heretics were punished in their 
freedom, property, and lives. Despite all this, the new doctrines 
made more and more progress ; psalms were sung, the preachings of 
the evangelical clergy, which Avere often held in the open air, were 
attended by thousands ; monks, images of the Virgin, and holy ob- 
jects, were turned to ridicule. At length the long restrained wrath 
of the people at the religious persecution burst its bounds in Antwerp, 
Brussels, and the whole of Brabant. A mob, consisting of the lowest 
class of the people, mutilated the crucifixes and images of the saints 
which were standing in the roads ; but the increasing multitude soon 
attacked the churches and cloisters, and perpetrated every kind of 
sacrilegious atrocity. These occurrences produced a division. The 
moderate party joined the regent, and assisted her in punishing the 
guilty. Order was in a short time restored, and Mai'garet recommended 
gentleness and moderation as the only means by which the tranquillity 
of the country could be permanently established. But her representa- 
tions found no acceptance in Madrid. It was determined to send 
the cruel Alba with a Spanish army to the Netherlands, and to re- 
duce the people by force and severity. 

Alba, a.d. § 357. The intelligence of Alba's arrival caused the 

15G7 — 1573. Netherlanders to take to flight in crowds. William of 
Orange, a prudent and circumspect man, in the full vigour of life, 
resolute, energetic, and taciturn, yielded to the storm and retreated 
to Holland. He parted in tears from Egmont, whom he vainly at- 
tempted to persuade to follow the same course. Egmont's happy 
nature could not give credit to the Spanish treachery, against which 
Orange warned him. He trusted to his former services to the royal 
famfly of Spain, and remained. But Alba had hardly 
arrived at Brussels with unlimited powers, before he 
placed the unsuspecting Egmont and the gallant Horn under arrest, 
and caused them, with eighteen others of the nobility, to be executed 
as traitors. He then established a council of rebellion, called by the 
Netherlander The Bloody Council, which punished with unexampled 
severity not only the disciples of the evangelical doctrine, but the 
resolute defenders of their country's rights and institutions. The 
regent, disgusted with these horrors, resigned her office and retired 
to Italy. Her memory was held in honour. Alba, however, erected 
a citadel in Antwerp, and for six years (a.d. 15G7 — 1573) exercised 
an oppressive tyranny that threatened the greatest danger to liberty 
and prosperity. Without regard to the laws of the land, which re- 
quired that the taxes should be allowed by the Estates of every district, 
and collected in a manner the best suited to their object, Alba im- 
posed a fixed tax upon the country, and levied it in a manner ex- 
tremely unfavourable to trade and commerce, inasmuch as in addition 
to ii property tax he introduced a high tarif. The discontent and 



THE TIMES OF PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 249 

irritation of the people at these oppressive imposts at length produced 
such a fermentation in the country, that Alba's recall was decided upon 
in Madrid. The intelligence that a band of exiles, called Water- GTueses, 
had stormed the sea-port, Briel, and that the northern states, Hol- 
land, Zealand, Utrecht, and Friesland, had united together and recog- 
nized "William of Orange as their Stadth older, might have 
a.d. 1572. . . & . 

convinced the Spanish court that Alba's proceedings 

were not leading to the desired result. Shortly after the duke's de- 
parture from the Netherlands, the northern states, in the synod of 
Dort, raised Calvinism to be the religion of the state, received the 
Heidelberg Catechism, and erected a Protestant university in the 
town of Leyden, as a reward for the heroic defence of the citizens 
against the beleaguering Spanish army. 

Zuniga, a.d. § 358. Alba's successor, Louis of Zuniga and Beques- 
1573—1576. cens, abolished the Bloody Council, and attempted by 
milder measures again to confirm the tottering power of Spain iu the 
Netherlands ; but the hatred of the people against the foreign troops, 
whose licentiousness every day increased, prevented a reconciliation. 
Even his victory on the Mokerheath, where two of the brothers of 
Orange died as became heroes, failed in producing the expected re- 
sidts. Zuniga died two years afterwards. Before his successor, Don 
Juan, Philip's gallant half-brother, could enter tipon his difficult 
Don Juan office, the insolence of the savage and unpaid soldiery 
a.d. 1576 — attained its highest pitch. They filled the wealthy cities 
1578. £ ]\/[ ae stricht and Antwerp with murder, plunder, and 

desolation. At this crisis, the shrewd Orange was successful in 

uniting the whole of the states, by the alliance of Ghent, 
a.d. 1576. 

in the resolution of mutually assisting each other, with 

life and property, in driving out the Spanish troops ; and Don Juan 

was not in a position, during the brief period of his exertions in the 

Netherlands, to re-establish firmly the shattered power of Spain. 

But Don Juan, as well as his more experienced successor, Alexander 

Alexander Farnese of Parma, son of the regent, Margaret, was intent 

Farnese, a.d. upon fostering the jealousy and hereditary envy between 

1578 1592 . 

the northern and southern states, and on maintaining 

the rights of the Catholic Church in the latter, that the dominion of 

Spain might be preserved in the southern states at least. This 

scheme was seen through by Orange, who, being convinced that even 

, ._„ the weak were strengthened by union, united the northern 
a.d. 1579. ? . . J 

states, (Holland, Zealand, Grelders, Utrecht, Priesland,) 

into a closer confederacy for the purpose of mutual co-operation, by 
the union of Utrecht. This alliance was the foundation of the United 
States of the Protestant Netherlands. On the other hand, matters 
in the south became every day more confused and divided by the in- 
termeddling of foreign princes and nobles, so that the energetic 



£50 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Parma was enabled in many places to suppress the insurrection, and 
to bring back many of the towns to obedience. Philip's wrath was 
now directed against Orange. He had already outlawed him, and 
promised a title of nobility and a vast reward to whosoever should 
deliver him up either alive or dead. This tempting promise, and the 
activity of fanatical priests was followed by several attempts at assas- 
sination. Orange escaped one of these, but the bullet of the fanatic, 
Gerhard of Pranche-Comte, laid him dead at the door of 
the royal banqueting-hall of Delft. The murderer was 
however seized and put to a cruel death. In the place of Orange, 
the northern states elected his gallant son, Maurice, as Stadtholder 
and general. 

§ 359. About this time, the religious animosity between Catholics 
and Protestants was greater than ever in the west of Europe ; and 
whilst the former placed all their hopes upon Philip of Spain, the 
latter received assistance either private or open from Elizabeth of 
England. She sent her favourite, Leicester, with an army into the 
Netherlands to prevent Parma's complete triumph ; she assisted the 
Huguenots against Philip's allies, the Leaguists and Jesuits (§ 3G2, 
. r „_ 361), and consented to the execution of Mary Stuart 
when she found that her own life was threatened by the 
daggers of fanatics (§ 368). Upon this, Philip determined to anni- 
hilate all the enemies of the Catholic Church by a mighty blow, and 
above all, to chastise heretical England and her excommunicated 
queen. With this view, he fitted out the Armada or " Invincible 
Eleet," consisting of 130 large ships of war, and sent them into the 

lrno Channel, under the command of Medina Sidonia, to the 
A.D. 1588. ' 

end that, supported by Parma's land force, they might 
subject at the same time, England, Erance, and the Netherlands. 
But the undertaking ended in the shame and ruin of Spain. The 
" Invincible Eleet" was destroyed by storms, and the skill and courage 
of the English ; the greatest part of that which escaped the fire-ships, 
the rocks, and the enemy, in the Channel, was wrecked upon the 
Hebrides and Shetland Islands, when Sidonia attempted to return to 
Spain by sailing round Scotland. It was a fatal blow. Philip ad- 
mitted this when he composed the trembling admiral with the 
words, "I sent you against men, not against rocks and storms." 
This event destroyed Spain's supremacy at sea, and secured the inde- 
pendence of the Netherlands. The Avar indeed continued for twenty 
years longer ; but the Spaniards, despite the bravery of their troops 
and the skill of their commanders, were not in a condition to subject 
the whole of the country. The northern states, who possessed an 
admirable leader in Maurice of Orange, maintained the struggle for 
freedom and independence. A short time before his death, Philip 
presented the Netherlands to his daughter, Clara Eugenia, on her 



THE TIMES OF PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. g51 

marriage with the archduke, Albert of Austria, as a fief, under the 
condition, that the land should revert to Spain hi the event of her 
dying without chddren. The United States of Holland, however, 
would not consent to this scheme. They still continued the war 
after the death of Philip II., till at length, by the intermediation of 
Henry IV. of France, a truce was arranged, by which 
their independence, religious freedom, and trade with the 
East Indies, was secured to them. But it was not till the peace of 
"Westphalia that the independence of the United States of Holland 
was formally acknowledged. The southern provinces (Belgium), on 
the other hand, remained for a whole century subject to Spain, and 
then fell into the hands of Austria. 

§ 360. Trade. — Government.' — Synod oe Dort. — Holland came 
forth from the struggle flourishing and powerful. Navigation and 
commerce received a vast impulse, after the Hollanders (particularly 
the East India Company, established in 1602) entered into direct 
commercial relations with India, and deprived the Portuguese of many 
of their colonies. Batavia, in the island of Java, was the centre of 
their lucrative traffic. The constitution of the United States, which 
was mainly the work of the great statesman, Oldenbarnveldt, was 
republican. The States General, which were formed by deputies 
from the seven provinces, possessed the power of legislation ; the High 
Council, with the stadtholder at its head, conducted the government ; 
the affairs of war however, and the supreme command over the sea 
and land forces, belonged to the stadtholder alone. The arts and 
sciences at the same time flourished prosperously ; the study of an- 
tiquity, m particular, met with unusual attention in the Dutch uni- 
versities. 

But even Protestant Holland did not remain free from the mis- 
chievous wars of religion. A dispute respecting the Calvinistic doc- 
trine of predestination divided the country into two parties, — a severe 
party (Gomarists), to which Maurice of Orange and his adherents 
attached themselves, and a moderate party (Arminians), whose sup- 
porters were Oldenbarnveldt and Hugo Grotius. The synod of Dort 
(§ 342) decided in favour of the former ; upon which, Oldenbarnveldt, 
who had deserved so highly and was then in his seventy-second year, 
perished on the scaffold ; and Hugo Grotius, the learned historian of 
the struggles of the Netherlands for liberty, and the founder of civil 
and international law according to the principles of the ancients, 
was confined in prison till rescued by the cunning and fidelity of 
his wife. 

C. ERANCE DURING THE WAR OE RELIGION. 

§ 361. During this period, furious religious wars were raging in 
Erance also. Henry II., a determined enemy of the Huguenots 



252 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

(§ 342), died in. consequence of a wound he received during a tourna- 
Francis II. ment. His feeble and delicate son, Francis II., was his 
a.d. 1559, successor. This prince was married to the fascinating 

Mary Stuart of Scotland, whose uncles, the Guises, in 
consequence, enjoyed great influence at the French court. The 
Guises, as zealous adherents of the Catholic Church and the papacy, 
made use of their lofty position to suppress the reformed party ; but 
by doing this gave their opponents, and in especial, the Prince Conde, 
of the family of Bourbon, and the Admiral Coligni, the opportunity of 
strengthening themselves by joining the Huguenots. The schism 
increased daily ; the one party strove to overthrow the other, and to 
secure the victory to their own side by the assistance of the king. 
The day on which the Estates assembled at Orleans was selected by 
both parties as a befitting time for the execution of this project. 
The Guises gained the advantage. The chiefs of the Huguenots 
already found themselves in prison, when a turn was given to affairs 
by the sudden death of the king. The queen-mother, Catherine of 
Medicis, placed herself at the head of affairs during the minority of 
Charles IX. * ne new kipg, Charles IX., and the Bourbons assumed a 
a.d. 1560 — position suited to their birth. The Guises, irritated at 

the neglect they experienced, retired with their niece, 
Mary Stuart, into Lorraine, from whence the latter, shortly after, 
departed Avith sorrow and mourning into Scotland. 

§ 362. The removal of the Guises from the court was of advantage 
to the reformed party. They obtained toleration. Enraged at this 
concession, the duke of Guise concluded an alliance with some other 
powerful nobles for the preservation of the ancient faith in France, 
and returned to Paris. During this return, a horrible slatighter was 
perpetrated by the Guises and their attendants upon some Calvinists 
of the town of Vassy, who were assembled together in a barn, for the 
celebration of Divine worship. This proved the signal for a religious 
war. The outrage given to the conceded liberty of conscience by this 
bloody act of violence cried for vengeance. France was soon divided 
into two hostde camps, that attacked each other with bitter animosity 
and religious rage. The most horrible atrocities were committed, and 
the kingdom disturbed to its inmost depths. The Catholics obtained 
aid from Borne and Spain, the Protestants were assisted by England ; 
Germany and Switzerland supplied soldiers. After the undecisive 
battle of Dreux, and the murder of the Duke Francis of Guise, at the 
siege of Orleans, peace Avas for a short time restored, and the Cal- 
vii lists again assured of religious toleration — a promise that met with 
but little attention. The tAvo parties Avere soon again arrayed in 

arms against each other. But despite the bravery of the 

Huguenots in the battle of St. Denis, where the elder 
Montmorenci lost his life, the superiority remained on the side of the 



THE TIMES OF PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 25S 

Catholics ; particularly when Catherine de Medicis, who had hitherto 
sided with neither party, embraced the interests of the latter. The sight 
of crucifixes and sacred objects broken to pieces, during a journey under- 
taken by the queen and her son, and the advice of the duke of Alba, 
with whom she had an interview in Bayonne, had produced this altera- 
tion in her opinions. After several bloody engagements in the vicinity 
of La Eochelle, which the Huguenots had selected as their battle- 
field, and after their gallant leader, Conde, had been basely assas- 
sinated during one of them, the peace of St. Germain was arranged, 
by which the Calvinists were again assured of the free exercise of 
their religion. Conde' s nephew, Henry of Beam, who 
had been bred up in the doctrine of Calvin by his mother, 
Johanna von Albret, now placed himself at the head of the Hugue- 
nots ; but the soul of the party was the brave Coligni, who stood by 
the side of the prince as his guide and adviser. 

§ 363. Coligni possessed great influence at the court after the 
peace. The young king respected him, and favoured him with his 
confidence. For the purpose of bringing about a permanent recon- 
ciliation between the religious parties, the king now urged a marriage 
between his sister, Margaret of Valois, and the Bourbon, Henry of 
Beam. This offended the Cruises, who believed that Coligni had 
proeured the assassination of Francis of Guise, and they resolved 
upon his destruction. Coligni was fired at one evening as he was 
returning to his own house from the Louvre. The ball, however, 
only shattered his arm, and it was necessary to devise a fresh plan of 
destruction. The Guises, in conjunction with Catherine of Medicis, 
now entertained the horrible project of taking advantage of the 
approaching marriage, for the solemnization of which many illustrious 
Calvinists had hastened to the capital, to destroy the chiefs of 
the Huguenot party. Thus originated the Bloody Nuptials of Paris 
in the night of St. Bartholomew, August 24th, 1572. When the alarm 
bell of St. Grermain l'Auxerrois gave the signal at midnight, bands of 
armed ruffians fell upon the defenceless Calvinists. The grey-headed 
hero, Coligni, was the first victim that the Guises sacrificed to their 
hate ; the murderous bands then marched through all parts of the 
city, filled the streets and houses with blood and corpses, and laughed 
to scorn every sentiment of humanity and justice. The butchery 
lasted for three days, and was imitated in other towns, so that at the 
lowest computation 25,000 Huguenots must have perished. The 
king, to whom the plan was communicated a short time before its 
execution, listened to the voice of his passions, and fired himself upon 
the fugitives. After the deed had been accomplished, and the Guises 
had been fixed upon by the public voice as its instigators, and called 
upon to answer for their conduct, Charles took the whole affair upon 
himself, and excused the crime by a pretended conspiracy. Many of 



251< THE MODERN EPOCH. 

the French quitted their homes in horror, and sought for security in 
Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Henry of Beam saved 
his life by a compulsatory abjuration, but returned to his old faith as 
soon as he found himself in security. 

§ 364. Charles IX. died two years after the night of 

a n 1 ^7 J. 

St. Bartholomew, troubled with evil dreams. His brother 
Henry, who had been for a twelvemonth the elected king of Poland, 
Hem-v III ne( ^ secre tly from the rude shores of the Vistula to take 
a.d. 1574 — possession of the fairer crown of France. Henry III. 
1589 » was a weak and luxurious prince, without either assiduity 

or energy. Shut up with his favourites and pet dogs in the inmost 
apartments of the palace, he forgot his kingdom with its disturbances 
and miseries ; and when remorse at his sinful life, which was passed 
in lust and debauchery, seized upon him, he sought consolation in 
superstitious devotion, in pilgrimages and processions, and in penance 
and flagellations. To bring the Huguenots to peace, so that he 
might be able to devote himself to the undisturbed enjoyment of the 
pleasures of his capital, Henry, immediately upon his accession, 
granted them freedom of conscience, and equal civil rights with the 
Catholics. Enraged at these concessions, which destroyed all the 
fruits of their previous exertions, the zealous Catholics, under the 
guidance of Henry of Guise, and with the cognizance of Philip II. of 
Spain, concluded the Holy League for the preservation of the Church 
in all its ancient rights. Many members were won to this alliance 
by the insinuations of the priests and monks, and by the intrigues of 
the Jesuits. The fickle and faithless king, disturbed by this move- 
ment, united himself with the Catholic zealots, declared himself the 
head of the League, and curtailed the religious peace. The duke of 
Anjou, Henry's younger brother, died a few years after this ; and as 
he, like the king, was without children, the Bourbon, Henry of Na- 
varre (Beam), became the nearest heir to the throne. This pi'ospect 

of a Protestant king alarmed the Catholic part of France, 
A d 1584 

and gave fresh vigour to the League. The weak king 
was obliged to recall all treaties with the Huguenots, to announce 
the extirpation of heresy, and to approve the arrangements of the 
League. Henry of Guise, at first, only entertained the notion of 
putting aside the Protestant successor to the throne, who had been 
excommunicated by the pope ; but his courage rose with his increas- 
ing power ; he soon made attempts upon the crown himself, whilst, 
as a pretended descendant of the Carlovingi, he asserted the supe- 
riority of his claims to those of the reigning family. A conspiracy 
was formed in Paris (where the citizens were kept in a state of per- 
petual agitation by fanatical popidar orators) against the freedom or 
life of the king ; and when Henry III. attempted to defend himself by 
calling in Swiss troops, the agitation burst into rebellion. The people 



THE TIMES OF PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 055 

assembled themselves around the Guises, Who, against the king's 
commands, were entering the capital, barricaded the 
' streets and bridges, and commenced a furious contest 
with single divisions of the troops. The trembling king fled with his 
favourites to Chartres, and left his capital in the hands of his rival. 
Henry of G-uise now possessed the same power that had belonged to 
the mayors of the palace in the time of the Merovingi (§ 184). But 
September, even this position did not satisfy the ambitious party 
1588. leader. An assembly of Estates convoked at Blois, where 

the adherents of the Guises were the strongest party, proposed not 
only to deprive the Bourbons of their right to the throne and to 
exterminate Calvinism, but to change the government, and to place 
the whole power in the hands of the Guises. At this crisis Henry 
hazarded a bold stroke ; he had the duke of Guise and his brother, 
the Cardinal Louis, assassinated, and imprisoned the most influential 
leaders of their party. This proceeding produced a fearful commotion 
in the whole nation : in Paris, allegiance was renounced to the God- 
forsaken king, who had overthrown the pillar of Catholicism ; the 
pope fulminated an excommunication at him ; revolutionary move- 
ments took place in many quarters. Despised and forsaken, Henry 
III. saw no other way to safety open to him than an alliance with 
Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. A frightful civil war burst 
out afresh, but fortune was hostile to the League. Henry had 
already laid siege to Paris, and threatened to reduce the faithless 
town to a heap of ruins, when the knife of a fanatical monk put an 
end to his life. . Henry III., the last Valois, died on the 1st of 
August, 1589, after appointing Henry of Navarre and Beam his 
successor. 

§ 365. Henry IV. had still a long struggle to sustain before his 
head was ornamented by the crown of Prance. Mayenne, the brother 
of the murdered Guise, placed himself at the head of the League, 
and offered a vehement resistance to the Calvinistic claimant of the 
throne. Philip II. sought to turn the confusion to his own advan- 
tage, and commanded his able general, Alexander of Parma, to march 
his forces from the Netherlands into Prance. Henry tried for a long 
time to get possession of his inheritance by the sword : he laid siege 
to Paris, and caused the citizens to feel all the horrors of 
famine ; but he at length became convinced that he never 
could gain peaceable possession of the Prench throne by battles and 
victories. He thought the crown of Prance was worth a mass, and 
went over to the Catholic Church in the cathedral of St. 
uy ' ' Denis, and by this means destroyed the power of the 
League. Paris now threw open its gates, and welcomed the bringer 
of peace with acclamations. The pope recalled the anathema; the 
heads of the League concluded a treaty with him, and Philip II., a 



25G THE MODERN EPOCH. 

short time before his death, consented to the peace of Vermis. After 
foreign and domestic tranquillity had been thus restored 
to Prance, the king, by the Edict of Nantes, conferred 
upon the Calvinists liberty of conscience, the full rights of citizen- 
ship, and many other privileges ; such as separate chambers in the 
courts of justice, several castles, with all their warlike munitions (La 
Bochelle, Montauban, Nimes, &c.,) and freedom from episcopal juris- 
diction. He next sought to heal the wounds that had been inflicted 
on the land by the war, by encouraging agriculture, trade, and com- 
merce ; and had the economy of the state and the taxation admirably 
arranged by his friend and minister, Sully. He won for himself the 
warmest affections of his people by his genuine Trench character, 
and by his cordial and cheerful disposition. His solitary failing, his 
too great love for women, was a merit in the eyes of the French. 
But fanaticism was only slumbering. Henry's tolerant disposition 
towards heretics awakened it. As he was meditating the vast plan 
(with the approval of the Dutch Union and other European powers) 
of founding a Christian community with equal privileges for the three 
Confessions, and by this means destroying the supremacy 
of the royal house of Hapsburg, he fell beneath the knife 
of Eavaillac. 

d. ELIZABETH AND MARY STUART. 

El'zabeth § ^66- Whilst Erance was being torn to pieces by the 

a.d. 1558 — war of religion, England, under Elizabeth, was making 
1603. mighty advances in trade and commerce, in navigation, 

agriculture, and literature. Elizabeth was a despotic ruler, who sup- 
pressed the ecclesiastical freedom of the people, and who would suffer 
no opposition to her will in parliament ; but she possessed great talents 
for government, a mind invigorated by severe studies, and an under- 
standing that enabled her invariably to recognize and select that which 
was most profitable for the country. She surrounded herself by sage 
councillors, among whom, Cecil (Lord Burleigh) held the first ranis, and 
maintained order and economy in the management of the state ; but the 
dissimulation she had been accustomed to practise during her perilous 
youth, rendered the crooked path of falsehood, and the subterfuges of 
a disingenuous policy agreeable to her. She displayed the latter more 
especially, in her conduct towards Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, 
who, in character, personal qualities, and history, formed a contrast to 
her neighbouring rival. Whilst Elizabeth, from the misfortunes of 
her youth, had carried with her into life a dowry of unamiabdity, 
severity, falsehood, and envy, the beautiful Mary, after a youth passed 
in joy and happiness, had brought to the Scottish throne a cheerfid 
and engaging nature, an open heart, and a joyous disposition; and 
whflst the English queen was closely bound to Protestantism and 



THE TIMES OF PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 257 

united in one Church with her people, Mary held fast to the Catholic 
faith and the papacy, in the midst of a rude nation, who, with their 
own hands, had raised the Presbyterian Church to be the Church of 
the kingdom, and who detested the mass as idolatry. Her private 
chapel was attacked, and the stern reformer, Knox, pronounced 
severe discourses against her from the pidpit of the palace, as the 
prophets had once done against the idolatrous kings of Israel. 

S 367. Mary united herself in a second marriage with 
Darnley, a Scotch nobleman, who had been brought up in 
England. The union, however, proved unfortunate. The vain, un- 
thinking husband, abandoned to the councils of insincere friends, 
found pleasure in nothing but hunting and feasting ; and was indig- 
nant at finding that the queen neglected him, and bestowed her con- 
fidence on the singer, Bizzio, from Turin, who conducted her corre- 
spondence with the Guises and the pope. Darin 1 ey, urged on by 
jealousy and a feeling of injured honour, and irritated by malicious 
friends, formed a conspiracy with some nobles, — and Mary's favourite, 
pierced by many daggers, fell lifeless before the eyes of 
his mistress, in her own chamber. This horrible deed 
filled the heart of the queen with bitterness against her husband, of 
whose guilt, despite his denial, she felt convinced. She separated 
herself more and more from him, entertained thoughts of a divorce, 
and turned her favour upon Bothwell, another Scottish nobleman. 
It was not till Darnley fell ill that she appeared to lay aside her dis- 
pleasure. She attended upon him with the greatest assiduity, in a 
February 10, remote garden-house. But the inhabitants of Edinburgh 
1567. were awakened one night, during Mary's absence, by a 

dreadful explosion. The garden-house was found shattered to pieces, 
and Darnley' s body apparently suffocated. The public voice pointed 
out Bothwell as the perpetrator of the deed ; and three months after, 
he was Mary's husband. Was it at all wonderful that she was 
accused of being an accomplice in the murder ? Irritated at this 
criminal marriage, the Scottish nobflity took up arms. Bothwell fled 
before the battle was fought, and led the life of a freebooter near the 
Hebrides, but was taken by the Danes, and died in prison, insane. 
Mary was led in triumph to Edinburgh amidst the execrations of her 
people, and then imprisoned in a solitary castle on the island of 
Lochleven, Avhere she was compelled to abdicate her crown, and to 
transfer the government to her half-brother, Murray, during the 
minority of her son, James. Mary, indeed, escaped and found assist- 
ance from the powerful family of Hamilton ; but having been over- 
come in a battle, she would have fallen a second time into the hands 
of her enemies, had she not fled with the greatest haste 
into England, to seek protection from Elizabeth. 
§ 368. The queen of England declined every interview with Mary 



£58 TliE MODERN EPOCH. 

unlil the latter should have cleared herself from the charge of having 
murdered her husband ; and since Mary, as an independent sovereign, 
would not submit herself to an English tribunal, it was considered 
necessary to retain her in England. But her presence soon endan- 
gered Elizabeth's safety. The duke of Norfolk attempted to gain 
Mary's hand, but lost first his freedom and afterwards his life. The 
ancient Church still numbered many adherents in the northern 
counties ; the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland raised the 
standard of rebellion, with the purpose of setting Mary at liberty, and 

restoring the Catholic Church. Their undertaking failed. 

Northumberland, given up by the Scots as a fugitive, 
died upon the scaffold. Mary was suspected as an accomplice ; she 
was removed from that neighbourhood and more closely watched. 
All the efforts of foreign courts to procure her liberation were fruit- 
less. The disturbed state of Scotland, where the rage of party was 
leading to assassination and civil war, and the religious contests on 
the continent, seemed to render her continued imprisonment neces- 
sary. At this juncture, Babington, with a few companions, embraced 
the project of murdering Elizabeth, and placing Mary, by the aid 
of Spanish troops, upon the English throne. Their purpose was 
discovered. The conspirators died upon the scaffold, and when it 
appeared, upon examination, that Mary was privy to the plot, the 
court pronounced her guilty, and Elizabeth was requested by the 
parliament, for the preservation of religion and the peace of the 
country, and for the security of her own person, to let justice take its 
course. She wished for the death of her enemy, but she feared the 
consequences. At length the struggle ended. Elizabeth signed the 
death-warrant, and Burleigh had it hastily executed. Mary's head 
fell on the 7th of Eebruary, 1587, in the nineteenth year of her im- 
prisonment and the forty-fifth of her life. She died with firmness, and 
true to her faith. Elizabeth, however, complained that her minister 
had ordered the execution against her commands, and punished her 
secretary, Davison, by fine and imprisonment, for having let the 
warrant out of his hands. 

§ 369. The pope and Philip II. heard of the deed with horror. 
The former outlawed the heretical queen, and summoned the Catholic 
powers to vengeance ; the latter fitted out the vast Armada (§ 359), 
for the purpose of subjecting England and the Netherlands at one 
blow, and of afterwards foimding a Catholic empire in the west of 
Europe, under the supremacy of Spain. But the destruction of the 
" Invincible Elect " raised the renown of England and its queen, and 
laid the foundation of Britain's empire of the sea and of the great- 
ness of her commerce. Erom this point, her trade, her navigation, 
and her colonies, received a vast impulse. Drake, the celebrated 
circumnavigator of the globe, and other maritime heroes, had dis- 



LITERATURE IN THE CENTURY OF THE REFORMATION. ?59 

covered the element on which the power and glory of England was 
to be raised. 

It was only in Ireland that Elizabeth's undertakings were unsuc- 
cessful. This island, which for centuries had been conquered but 
never taken possession of, had been raised into a kingdom by Henry 
VIII. , and subjected to the religious laws of England. But it was 
only a small proportion of the population, namely, the British colo- 
nists, who received the Reformation ; the native Irish remained true 
to their ancient faith and clergy. Elizabeth attempted to bring about 
a closer political and ecclesiastical union between the island and Eng- 
land. The earl of Tyrone, one of the military chiefs, opposed himself 
to this project, and obtained help from Spain and Borne. Upon this, 
the chivalrous earl of Essex, to whom the queen had transferred the 
favour she had so long bestowed upon his unworthy father-in-law, 
the earl of Leicester, received the governorship of Ireland. But 
instead of subduing Tyrone, he concluded a disadvantageous treaty 
with him. Essex, by this means, incurred the displeasure of the 
queen ; and when, instead of waiting quietly for a more favourable 
time, he formed a plot with James of Scotland, and attempted to 
compel Elizabeth by an insurrection to appoint James her successor, 
he was seized, and beheaded in the Tower, at the age of thirty-three. 
Grief and remorse at the death of her favourite, and the conscious- 
ness that the affections of her people had much cooled towards her, 
embittered the last years of the queen's life to such a degree, that 
she passed days and nights in tears on the cushions with which the 
floors were covered, till her death, at the age of seventy years, put an 
end to her sorrows. On her death-bed she appointed Mary's son, 
James of Scotland, her successor. 

e. CULTURE AND LITERATURE IN THE CENTURY OE THE 
REFORMATION. 

§ 370. Civilization received a mighty impulse during the sixteenth 
century in all countries. Schools were improved and universities 
multiplied ; art and literature were fostered and supported. The 
works of the ancients, which were every where translated and ex- 
plained, awakened new views and cultivated the taste ; and the 
mental energy that had been called into existence by the disputes 
respecting religion and the Church, furthered the general cultivation 
and enlightenment, and exalted literary activity. The interest in 
intellectual gifts produced marvellous creations in the regions of art 
and science. Germany and Italy were considered the chief seminaries 
of civilization. 

1. The science of antiquity was more especially cultivated and 
developed in the numerous universities of Germany, and those learned 
seminaries that rested upon the study of the ancient classical lite- 

s 2 



0(30 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

rature were established by the efforts of Melancthon, which extended 
Copernicus themselves over all countries. It was in Germany that 
a.d. 1473 — Nicholas Copernicus, the great astronomer of Thorn, 
showed that the Ptolemaic system of the universe, the 
truth of which had remained unquestioned for fifteen hundred years, 
was founded on incorrect data ; that the sun remained stationary in 
the midst of the planetary system, but that the earth, like the other 
planets, in addition to the revolution on its axis, had besides an 
K d1 r extremely regular circular motion around the sun. And 

a.d. 1571 — Kepler, one of the greatest thinkers of any age, sought, 
1631. in the spirit of Plato, for the laws that govern the eternal 

order of the world, with the inspiration of a prophet, and the creative 
power of a poet. Unappreciated, however, and persecuted by religious 
zealots, he led a melancholy life, in the midst of oppressive anxieties 
c ,-, for the means of living. It fared no better with his great 

a.d. 15C5 — contemporary, Galileo of Pisa, who, because he shared the 
1631, astronomical opinions of Copernicus, was summoned before 

the tribunal of the inquisition, and compelled to renounce his opinions 
on his knees. He was obliged after this to linger for some years in the 
dungeons of the inquisition, where he contracted an affection of the 
eyes, which afterwards terminated in blindness. 

In the mean time, the " Meistersong," a kind of burgher poetry in 
which Hans Sachs, a shoemaker of Nuremberg, particu- 
a.d. 1494— laxly distinguished himself, was flourishing in the German 
15/C. towns ; and Sebastian Brandt of Strasburg (author of the 

1458— 'l 521 "Ship of Pools"), and John Pischart of Mayence, raised 
Fischart, a.d. satirical didactic poetry to high perfection. Luther, how- 
ever, Avas the creator of German prose by his translation of 
the Bible, and the founder of German sacred poetry by his spiritual 
hymns. 

The Germans were also distinguished at this time in the fine arts. 
The pictures of Albert Durer (a.d. 1548), Hans Holbein (a.d. 1563), 
and Lucas Cranach (a.d. 1553), are still much esteemed, although 
they do not rival those of their great Italian contemporaries, Michael 
Angelo (a.d. 1563), Eaphael (a.d. 1520), Titian (a.d. 1576), Leonardo 
da Vinci (a.d. 1519), or Correggio (a.d. 1513). 

2. In Italy, the flourishing period of art and literature, which had 
commenced in the fifteenth century, continued throughout the whole 
Macchiavelli °f ^ 10 sixteenth. In Florence, Macchiavelli, one of the 
a.d. 1527- acutest of thinkers and most politic of statesmen, com- 
posed his remarkable works, " Discourses on Titus Livius," "History 
of Florence," "The Prince," which still excite universal admiration. 
In the much-talked-of book "The Prince," Macchiavelli presents the 
picture of a ruler who, without regard to virtue, morality, or religion, 
knows how to establish lus own absolute power, and to make his own 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. %Q\ 

will the law. Freedom and national prosperity are as little regarded 
in this book as truth and justice ; intellect alone is held in any esti- 
mation. [For this reason, a faithless system of policy is distinguished 
Ariosto ky the epithet, Macchiavellian. In Eerrara, Ariosto 

a.d. 1474 — wrote the fascinating and sportive heroic poem of " Or- 
T) '. ' , lando Eurioso ;" and the melancholy Torquato Tasso cele- 

Tasso, a.d. brated the first crusade in beautiful language in his 
1595. « Jerusalem Delivered." 

3. The sixteenth century was the golden age of art and literature 
Cervantes ^ Spain an d Portugal also. Cervantes, in his comico- 
a.d. 1547— satirical romance of " Don Quixote," has represented, with 

such art, a man who completely mistakes the misty crea- 
tions of a world of dreams for actual existences, and fights for an 
object that exists no where but in his own imagination, that the 
name of his hero has become proverbial. The dramatic poetry of 
Lope de Vega, Spain reached its culminating point in Lope de Vega and 
^'?' 1552 Calderon. The Portuguese poet, Camoens, has ennobled 
Calderon,A.D. the great epoch of the discovery of India in his poem of 
1600— 1687. the "Lusiad." During a passage home from the East 

A D 15i! 4 Indies he lost his property by a shipwreck, and saved 

15G9. nothing but his poem, that he held fast with his teeth as 

he swam. In Portugal he gradually fell into such poverty that he had 
bread collected by an Indian servant to prevent his dying of hunger. 

4. In England, William Shakspeare, one of the greatest poets of 
Shakspeare an y a & e ' § ave ^ s ^^ perfection to dramatic poetry, 
a.d. 1564— whether tragedy or comedy. His great dramas are 
1616. founded either upon historical events ("Henry IV.," 
"Bichard III."), or upon the ordinary events of human life ("Mac- 
beth," "Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello"); the best known 
of his comedies are, " Midsummer Night's Dream," and " The Merry 
"Wives of Windsor ; " in the latter, the fat Ealstaff, the companion 
of Henry V., and the type of a comic character, plays the chief part. 



III. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

1. THE THIRTY YEABS' WAR (A.D. 1618 1648). 

a. BOHEMIA, PALATINATE, LOWEB GEBMANY, TILLY. APPEABANCE 

OF WALLEKSTELN". 

§ 371. Whilst the dark fanaticism of Philip II. was plunging the 

Ferdinand West of Europe into a bloody religious war, arms were 

a.d. 1556 — at rest in Grermany under the gentle government of Eer- 

Jj? 64 : ... dinand I. and Maximilian II. Both these princes upheld 
Maximilian r . r . 

II., a.d. the Peace of Religion with impartiality and justice 

1564—1576. (§ 340). But when, after the premature death of Maxi- 



2CyO THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Rudolf II milian II., his son, Rudolf II., who had been brought up 
a.d. 157G— in Spain, came to the throne, complaints arose of the 
1612. infringement of the law, and of violation of liberty of con- 

science. Rudolf, a prince zealously devoted to the Catholic Church, 
but possessed of but slender talents for government, neglected the 
affairs of his kingdom for the study of astronomy, painting, and 
antiquities, and trusted to the advice of the Jesuits, who strewed 
with busy hands the seeds of religious discord, and called forth strife, 
party-spirit, and confusion, both in the German empire and in the 
hereditary states of Austria. "When the archbishop, Gebhard of 
Cologne, went over to the evangelical Church, that he might marry 
the beautiful countess of Mansfeld, he was deprived of his dignity ; 
a proceeding that was declared by the evangelical States to be an in- 
fringement of the "spiritual proviso." The archduke, Ferdinand, 
bred up and guided by the Jesuits, refused the numerous Protestants 
in Styria, Carinthia, and Krain, the religious liberties they had 
hitherto enjoyed; had the evangelical churches and schools pulled 
down, and the Bibles burnt, and drove out of the country, without 
mercy, all those who refused to attend the mass. The imperial city 
of Donauworth, which was chiefly Protestant, was placed under the 
ban for disturbing a procession, taken possession of by the impatient 
duke, Maximilian I. of Bavaria, and deprived of its Protestant wor- 
ship. It was in vain that the evangelical Estates presented com- 
plaints, the weak and indifferent emperor gave no redress. It was 
on this account that a number of evangelical princes and imperial 
a r> 1C08 cities concluded a Protestant Union, at the instigation of 
the elector of the Palatinate, for mutual assistance against 
a.d. 1009. aggression and violence. This Union Avas opposed by the 
Catholic League, formed by Maximilian of Bavaria and the spiritual 
electors (Mayence, Treves, and Cologne), and some bishops (AVurz- 
burg, Augsburg, &c). In this manner, Germany was again divided: the 
League united itself with Spain; the Union secured the aid of Henry of 
Prance and the Dutch. The death of the childless duke of Cleves 
and Berg, which occasioned a quarrel for his inheritance between the 
palgravc of JNeuburg, who had gone over to the Catholic Church, 
and the evangelical elector of Brandenburg, gave the first occasion 
for hostilities between the two religious parties. After a long and 
destructive war, a division was agreed upon, by which Cleves was 
allotted to Brandenburg, and Berg with Dusseldorf to the Pala- 
tinate. 

§ 372. The incompetence and carelessness of Rudolf threatened to 
destroy all respect for the royal house of Hapsburg. His relatives, 
therefore, compelled him to surrender Austria and Hungary to his 
brother, Matthias. Rudolf, who was extremely favourable to the 
Bohemians, whose capital, Prague, he had chosen for a residence, 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 0(33 

maintained them for some time in their allegiance by the granting of 
letters patent, which gave to the Utraquists and Lutherans freedom 
of conscience, equality with the Catholics, and their own defenders. 
But he was obliged at length to relinquish this kingdom also, with its 
surrounding territories, to Matthias, so that when death 
put an end to his inglorious life, he was in possession of 
nothing but the powerless imperial throne. 

Matthias -^ u ^ Matthias had j us t as little energy or talents for 

a.d, 1G12 — government as Rudolf; and being old and childless, he 
appointed his cousin, Ferdinand of Carinthia, his succes- 
sor in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia. The elevation of this rigid 
Catholic filled the Protestants (Utraquists, Lutherans) in Bohemia 
with alarm for their religious liberties. This alarm increased, when, 
upon the building of two Protestant churches on the territories of the 
abbot of Brunau and of the monastery of Grab, near Toplitz, a deci- 
sion was given, that no evangelical church should be erected upon 
ecclesiastical property ; and in consequence of this prohibition, one 
church was shut up and the other destroyed. The defenders, who 
saw in this an infringement of the letters patent, held a meeting, and 
proposed a remonstrance to the emperor, who was then absent in 
Hungary. The reply confirmed the prohibition, and contained a 
severe reproof to the complainers. Irritated at this, the defenders, 
under the guidance of the Count von Thurn, marched in arms to the 
councd-house, for the purpose of calling to account the imperial 
councd, to whom they attributed the offensive writing. After a short 
dispute, the irritated Protestants seized upon two of the councillors 
who were present, Martinitz and Slawata, who were particularly offen- 
sive to them as zealous Catholics, and threw them, together with the 
secretary, Pabricius, out of the castle window. But notwithstanding 
the height, and the shots that were fired after them, they all escaped 
with their lives. Upon this, the evangelical Estates established a 
new government, expelled the Jesuits, and fitted out an army under 
the command of Thurn. The intelligence of these proceedings has- 
tened the death of Matthias, who was already afiing. He 
' died at the moment, in which Thurn, supported by the 
brave general, Ernest von Mansfeld, defeated the imperial troops 
who had marched into Bohemia, and appeared with his 
army before the gates of Vienna. The oppressed Pro- 
testants of Austria entered into an alliance with Thurn, their ambas- 
sadors forced their way into the imperial palace, and demanded from 
Frederick, with threats, religious toleration, and an equality of their 
rights with those of the Catholics. The danger was pressing ; but 
Ferdinand resolutely refused every concession, till the arrival of Dam- 
pierre's dragoons freed him from constraint. Unfavourable weather 
and a deficiency in provisions compelled Thurn to retreat. 



26 I, THE MODERN EPOCH. 

§ 373. Shortly after this, Ferdinand II. was elected emperor of 
Germany in Frankfort ; but before his coronation took place, the 
Estates of Bohemia and Moravia fell off from the house of Austria, 
and chose for king the elector, Frederick V., of the Palatinate, the 
head of the Protestant Union. It was in vain that well-disposed 
friends warned him of the dangerous gift, — the voice of his haughty 
wife, a daughter of James I. of England, the exhortations of his Cal- 
vinistic court preacher, Scultetus, and his own ambition, determined 
November, ^ fle result. The vain and weak man assumed the Bo- 
1619. hernial^ throne, and hastened to receive homage and be 

invested with the crown at Prague, where he squandered the time in 
idle shows, gave himself up to luxurious living, and offended the 
Utraquists and Lutherans in Bohemia by his zeal for Calvinism. 
Ferdinand's conduct was altogether different. He concluded an 
alliance with the shrewd Maximilian of Bavaria, who had been edu- 
cated by the Jesuits, and who was the head of the well-provided 
League ; and who soon ordered his able general, Tilly, the Nether- 
November 7, lander, to march with his army into Bohemia. The battle 
1G25. at the "White Hill was soon fought, in which Frederick's 

exhausted ti-oops were defeated by the superior force of the enemy, 
and sought their safety in headlong flight. A single hour decided 
the fate of Bohemia. Frederick lost all courage and discretion so 
completely, that he fled with the greatest haste across Silesia to the 
Netherlands, pursued by the imperial sentence of outlawry, which 
deprived him of his hereditary possessions of the Palatinate. Bo- 
hemia and Moravia were again in a few months subjected to Austria. 
Ferdinand cut the letters patent to pieces with his own hand ; twenty- 
seven of the most illustrious nobles died on the scaffold ; hundreds 
expiated their offences by the forfeiture of their goods ; and the con- 
fiscated property was bestowed upon the Jesuits and other religious 
orders. Tyranny, oppression, and seduction, gave a complete triumph 
to the Catholic religion in a few decades, after upwards of 30,000 
families had left the country. Shortly after this, the Union, which 
had looked quietly on during these proceedings, was dissolved in the 
midst of universal contempt. 

§ 374. After the subjugation of Bohemia, Tilly marched against 
the Palatinate of the Rhine. Three courageous men ventured to 
take the field in the cause of the outlawed electors and endangered 
Protestantism : Christian of Brunswick, administrator of the bishop- 
ric of Halberstadt, a rude soldier, who presented himself as the 
defender of the electoress Elizabeth, and who, having collected a 
troop of soldiers, marched plundering through "Westphalia towards 
the Maine ; Ernest von Mansfeld, a knightly adventurer, who main- 
tained his troops by plunder and levying contributions, and treated 
the bishoprics and monasteries on the Maine and Bhine with great 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 055 

severity ; and the margrave, George Frederick of Baden-Durlach. 
The two latter united gained a victory over Tilly at 
Wiesloch (Mingolsheim) . But when the victors shortly 
after separated themselves, George Frederick, the follow- 
ing month, lost the battle of Wimpfen, and would have 
himself fallen into the hands of the enemy had not 400 of the citizens 
of Pforzheim covered his retreat by an heroic death. A few months 
later, Christian of Brunswick also suffered a defeat near 
Hochst, from Tilly's veteran troops, and marched hi con- 
junction with Mansfeld into the Netherlands, to obtain help from 
England, whilst the League general stormed Heidelberg, Manheim, 
and Frankentkal, sent the Heidelberg library to Borne, and filled 
every place with blood and plunder. In the following year, Maxi- 
milian of Bavaria received the electorship of the Palatinate, as a 
reward from the Diet of Begensberg. 

§ 375. Ferdinand, not content with the defeat of his enemies, 
wished to make use of his superiority to restore the Catholic Church 
and to suppress Protestantism. This occasioned anxiety, and procured 
the enemies of the emperor the assistance of England, Holland, and 
Denmark. Mansfeld, Christian of Brunswick, and the margrave of 
Baden, appeared again in the field provided with troops and money, 
and were still supported by Christian IV. of Denmark, who was 
induced to assume arms, partly by religious zeal, and partly by the 
hope of increasing his territories. A new storm burst forth. Upon 
this, the emperor, to whom the dependence upon the League and the 
great authority of Maximilian appeared dangerous, determined to 
raise an army of his own. In this undertaking, Albert of Wallen- 
stein, a Bohemian nobleman, offered him his assistance. In posses- 
sion of a vast property that he had gained by marriage, Wallenstein 
presented himself before Ferdinand with the offer of supporting an 
army of 50,000 men at his own expense, if he were allowed the 
unlimited command of them, and the privdege of indemnifying him- 
self from the conquered lands. After some hesitation, Ferdinand 
acceded to the proposal of the bold adventurer, and granted him the 
governorship of Friedland, on the northern frontier of Bohemia, raised 
him to the office of elector of the empire, and afterwards conferred 
iipon him the dignity of duke. The war now extended itself into the 
north of Germany. But when Wallenstein with his wild bands took 
possession of the shores of the Elbe, and effected a junction with 
Tilly, the army of the League and emperor soon obtained the advan- 
tage. Mansfeld suffered a defeat from the Friedlanders at the 
bridge of Dessau, and he was overtaken by death at Bosnia, as he 
was conducting the remains of his army by a difficult march through 
Hungary into the Netherlands . Christian of Brunswick 
sunk into the grave in the same year, and Christian IV. 



OQQ THE MODERN EPOCH. 

was defeated by Tilly at Lutter, near the Barenberg, 
' and compelled to retreat into Denmark. His ally, the 

duke of Mecklenburg, was obliged to leave his territories, of which, 
from that time, Wallenstein, with the emperor's permission, took 
possession ; Holstein, Schleswic, and Jutland soon fell into the 
hands of the imperialists in the midst of horrible devastations ; Po- 
merania and Brandenburg were compelled to receive imperial garri- 
sons ; the whole north laid subdued at the feet of the emperor, and 
the Protestant princes and cities awaited with fear and trembling the 
destiny that it should please Austria and Bavaria to award them. In 
this strait, Stralsund gave an ennobling example of patriotism and 
heroic courage. The citizens resolutely refused to admit an imperial 
garrison within then walls. Hereupon, Wallenstein advanced upon 
the town with his formidable army, and swore that lie woidd take it 
if it were bound to heaven with chains. But all his attacks were 
frustrated by the strength of the place and the heroism of the citizens. 
After he had encamped for ten weeks before the city, and sacrificed 
12,000 men, lie gave up the attempt. This result cheeked Wallen- 
stein's plans of conquest, and brought the war to a more rapid ter- 
mination. Christian IV. recovered his devastated lands 
a.d 1629. 

by the peace of Liibeck, but was obliged to promise that 

he would refrain from any farther interference in the affairs of 
Germany. 

§ 376. Austria was again victorious ; and the more decisive her 
victory, the greater was to be the triumph of the Catholic Church. 
The Protestant worship was suppressed by violence in all the con- 
quered and occupied lands, and the supremacy of Catholicism gra- 
dually prepared for. With this object, the emperor, at the insti- 
gation of the spiritual electors, published the Edict of 
Restitution, by virtue of which, all foundations and 
ecclesiastical property that had been confiscated since the treaty of 
Passau (§ 337), were to be restored to the Catholic Church, the 
Calvinists were excluded from the religious peace, and the Catholic 
Estates were not to be interfered with in their attempts to convert 
their subjects. This arrangement, which threatened to Avrest a great 
number of bishoprics, and almost all the foundations and abbeys of 
Northern Germany, from the hands of their then proprietors, filled the 
whole of the Protestant part of the country with terror and alarm, 
and prolonged the destructive civil war. Many princes and cities 
refused compliance, and the emperor found himself obliged to retain 
his army under arms to give effect to the execution of the Edict. 
But this army was no longer under the command of Wallenstein. 
Eor when the princes made a general complaint, at the Diet of 
Eegensburg, of the frightful ravages and barbarous method of warfare 
pursued by the duke of Friedland, and Maximilian imperatively 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. £(57 

demanded the removal of his presuming and overhearing rival, Ferdi- 
nand, who wished to produce a favourahle disposition towards the 
contemplated election of his son, found himself compelled to pro- 
nounce "Wallenstein's deposition. The general was informed of the 
resolution whilst busied with his astrological studies. He retired to 
his Bohemian estates, where, in proud repose, and in the enjoyment 
of kingly wealth, he awaited the time when his presence would be 
again required. Tilly assumed the command over the assembled host, 
and marched against Magdeburg, which had opposed the execution of 
the Edict of Restitution. But whilst the Protestant Estates of 
Germany, helpless and overawed, bent before the superior power 
of Austria, and looked forward in melancholy expectation for the 
postponed execution of the Edict of Restitution, a fresh hero made 
his appearance on the soil of Germany — the Swedish king, Gustavus 
Adolphus. 

b. INTERFERENCE OE SWEDEN. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AND 
WALLENSTEIN. 

§ 377. Gustavus Adolphus, the grandson of Gustavus Yasa (§ 349), 
determined to interfere in the war of Germany, partly to defend Pro- 
testantism, and partly to increase the power of Sweden. He was sup- 
ported by the shrewd Cardinal Richelieu (§ 400), who at that time 
governed Erance, and who looked with jealousy upon the increasing 
power of the house of Hapsburg. As soon as Gustavus Adolphus 
had effected a landing on the coast of Pomerania, the old 

' duke of the country surrendered his lands, which had been 
frightfully ravaged by the imperial troops, to Sweden. The piety of 
Gustavus, and the strict discipline of his soldiers, who assembled 
themselves twice a day around their field preachers, formed a striking 
contrast to the desolating mode of warfare pursued by Tilly and Wallen- 
stein, so that the people every where greeted the Swedes and their high- 
minded king as resellers and deliverers. Not so the princes, who, from 
February, ^ ear °^ ^ ne em peror's vengeance, rejected the alliance that 
1C31. was offered them, and at the Diet of Leipsic, embraced 

the resolution of observing a neutral position. The electors of 
Brandenburg and Saxony refused permission to the Swedes to march 
through their territories ; and whilst Gustavus Adolphus was delayed 
by negotiations on this subject, Magdeburg,' after repeated 

' assaults, was taken and destroyed by Pappenheim and 
Tilly. The barbarous troops, urged on by a desire for vengeance, and a 
love of plunder, burst into the luckless town, which was surrendered 
to them for three days' plunder, and which now became the scene of 
the most revolting horrors, till a conflagration, which extended itself 
on all sides, converted it at length into a heap of ashes. Two 



OQS THE MODERN EPOCH. 

churches and a few fishermen's huts, were the sole remains of this 
flourishing imperial city. 

§ 378. The destroyer of Magdeburg now turned a threatening 
aspect towards Saxony. The elector, in the anguish of his heart, 
concluded an alliance with Gustavus Adolphus, that he might be 
able, by the help of Sweden, to prevent the entrance of Tilly's incen- 
September 7, diary' troops into his territories. The battle of Leipsic 
1631. and Breitenfeld was soon fought, where the imperial 

army was completely defeated. Tilly, who was himself in danger of 
his life, was obliged, after a great loss, to retreat rapidly into the 
south, whilst the Swedes turned towards the Rhine and the Maine. 
Before the winter Avas over, the bishopric of Wurzburg, and the 
greater part of the Lower Palatinate, were in the hands of the Swedes ; 
and the towns of the Rhine also fell into the power of Gustavus, 
after he had accomplished the passage of the Rhine at Oppenheim, 
and driven back the Spaniards. In the spring he marched upon 
Nuremburg-on-the-Lech, where Tilly had occupied a strong position. 
The Swedes forced a passage across the vigorously defended river. 
During the storming of the intrenchments, Tilly was so severely 
wounded by a cannon-ball that he died fourteen days after at Ingol- 
stadt, his mind busied with military afiairs in the very hour of death. 
War filled the entire soul of this hero. Simple and moderate in his 
mode of living, he despised wealth and possessions, as well as titles 
and dignities. Sensual enjoyments were as unknown to him as high 
cultivation or nobility of mind. 

After the occupation of Augsburg, where the evangelical form of 
worship was again restored, Gustavus Adolphus marched into Bavaria, 
and took possession, as an indulgent conqueror, of Munich, which 
had been deserted by the court. A fine, and carrying off 140 con- 
cealed cannons, was the only punishment inflicted by the king upon 
the trembling Bavarians. 

§ 379. In the mean time, the emperor in his necessity had again 
had recourse to Wallenstein, and prevailed upon him, by prayers and 
great concessions, to raise a fresh army and to take the supreme 
command. After a successful campaign against the Saxons in Bo- 
hemia, Wallenstein, in conjunction with the Bavarians, marched into 
Branconia, where the Swedes had oocupied a strong position near 
Nuremburg. "Here the hostile armies lay encamped opposite each 
other for months without coining to an engagement, till at length all 
the land for seven miles around the spot was wasted, and even the 
abundant stores of Nuremburg began to fail. Hereupon, Gustavus 
resolved to attack the si n>ng camp of Wallenstein, but the gallant 
assailers were driven back by the tremendous discharge of artillery. 
The attempt, after a severe loss, was obliged to be relinquished, upon 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 0Q() 

which, the Wallensteiners marched into Saxony. The Swedes soon 
November 16, followed them hither, and the eventful battle of Lutzen, 
1032. where the Swedes triumphed, but their king found the 

death of a hero in the tumult of the fight, took place upon a foggy 
day in November. Pappenheim, the gallant leader of cavalry, was 
also borne from the field of battle mortally wounded ; and Wallenstein 
found himself compelled to leave the field to the enemy, and to re- 
treat into Bohemia with his defeated army. The Swedes dragged the 
body of their heroic king, plundered, and defaced by the hoofs of 
horses, from beneath the dead, and had it committed to the earth in 
its native land. 

§ 880. After the death of Grustavus Adolphus, the Swedish chan- 
cellor, Axel Oxenstierna, a prudent and energetic statesman, under- 
took the conduct of the war in Germany, after he had prevailed upon 
a number of the evangelical princes and cities, by the alliance of 
Heilbron, to continue stedfast in the treaty they had 
entered into with the king of Sweden. Bernhard of 
"Weimar and the Swedish general, Horn, stood by his side as the 
chief military leaders. France gave supplies of money. Thus this 
mischievous war continued to rage. Bavaria was severely visited by 
the Swedes, who since the death of their king had not been a whit 
behind their opponents in the destructive way of carrying on the 
war ; and the Friedlanders behaved in such a way in Silesia, that the 
prosperity of the land Avas for a long time destroyed. But Wallen- 
stein' s course was approaching its termination. His dilatory way of 
conducting the war, and his unintelligible lingering in Bohemia, were 
made use of by his numerous enemies and enviers to his destruction. 
He was accused of entertaining the project of entering into an alliance 
with Sweden, and of placing the crown of Bohemia upon his own 
head ; it was for this reason that he had set at liberty the captive 
Count Thurn, the hereditary enemy of Austria ; and the contract 
that had been entered into, by the mediation of Illo, between "Wal- 
lenstein and the leaders of the different divisions for mutual ad- 
herence, pointed to revolt and treachery. The emperor, guided by 
the friends of Maximilian, by monks and Jesuits, who hated the duke 
on account of the freedom of his religious views, determined upon 
the destruction of his too powerful general. After the most influen- 
tial leaders, Grallas, Piccolomini, and Altringer, had been secured, 
Ferdinand pronounced Wallenstein' s deposition ; and when the latter 
marched towards Eger, with the most devoted of his troops, to be 
nearer a juncture with the Swedes, he was assassinated, together with 
his most trusty adherents, Illo, Terska, and Kinsky, by the Irish- 
February 25, man, Butler, and a few confederates. The vast posses- 
1C34. sions of the duke and his friends were confiscated, and 

presented to his betrayers and murderers. Honours, dignities, and 



270 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

wealth, were the rewards of the criminals. Thus died Wallenstein, 
the terror of the people, and the idol of the soldiery. He possessed 
an audacious and enterprising spirit, a commanding character, that 
was exalted hy the taciturnity of his disposition and the gloomy 
severity of his aspect, and a boundless pride and ambition. "When 
his lofty figure, enveloped in a scarlet mantle, and with a red feather 
in the hat, was seen pacing through the camp, a strange horror took 
possession of the soldiers. 

C. TEKMI^ATION OE THE WAIt. PEACE OE WESTPHALIA. 

§ 381. After the death of Wallenstein, the imperial army marched 

into Bavaria, and defeated Bernhard of Weimar in the battle of Nord- 

September G, hngen. Several German princes took occasion from this 

1534. to conclude the peace of Prague with the emperor. But 

ay ' ' ' the frightful war was not yet terminated. Richelieu, who 

was not willing that the favourable moment for diminishing the power 

of the Hapsburgs, and extending the territories of France, should 

escape unimproved, promised efficient assistance both in money and 

troops to the Swedes, and supported Bernhard of Weimar in his 

,„™ undertakings on the Upper Rhine. The Swedish general, 

a.d. 163G. & Ll . D ' 

Bauer, conquered Saxony and Thuringia, and converted 

the fertile country into a depopulated desert. Unspeakable calamities 
February 15, were pressing upon the German nation when the emperor, 
1637. Ferdinand II., sank into' the grave, and was succeeded by 

j j j x n his son of the same name. The warlike actions of Bern- 
1G37 — 1G57- hard of Weimar were crowned with success. He con- 
quered Rheinfelden, Freiburg, and Breisach, and entertained the pro- 
ject of establishing an independent principality on either side of the 

Rhine. But Bernhard died suddenly in the flower of life, 

July 18, 1G39. .,, , . . _ . . J , , . „ , , ■,' 

not without suspicion ot poisoning ; and the _b rencn took 

advantage of the circumstance to take his army into their own pay, and 
make themselves masters of Alsace. They soon crossed the Rhine 
and carried the war into the south of Germany, whilst the gallant 
Bauer again visited the unfortunate Bohemia with the most frightful 
calamities. Bauer's audacious plan of breaking suddenly from his 
Avinter quarters, aud seizing upon the electors and emperor at the 
Diet in Regensburg, had not the expected result. The breaking up 
of the frost and the arrival of the enemy compelled the Swedish 
general to a retreat, during which he died from the effects of his ex- 
ertions and of an intemperate life. 

§ 382. Torstenson was Baner's successor, he was the most talented 
disciple of the school of Gustavus Adolphus. On account of his suffer- 
ings from the gout he was usually carried about in a litter ; never- 
theless the rapidity of his movements was the astonishment of the 
world. He overthrew the imperial army near Leipsic, and at the lull 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 07 { 

.„ Tabor; penetrated repeatedly into the heart of the Aus- 

trian states, and made the emperor tremble in his capital ; 
he then appeared unexpectedly on the Lower Elbe, took possession 
of Holstein and Schleswic, and compelled the Danish king to a dis- 
advantageous peace. At length, exhausted by dlness, he laid down 
the leading staff, which was obtained by the gallant Wrangel. 
Wrangel, in conjunction with the French general, Turenne, carried 

,-„ JH , the war into Bavaria, compelled Maximilian to fly, and to 

A.D. 104/. x . J 

conclude a truce, and was about to unite himself with the 
Swedish general, Konigsmark, in Bohemia, when the news of the 
conclusion of the peace of Westphalia put an end to military opera- 
tions. The war ended in Prague where it had also taken its origin. 

§ 383. After five years of negotiations in Minister and Osnaburg, 
the peace of Westphalia, which the people who were wearied out by 
the war demanded in despair, was at last concluded. France received 
the Austrian portion of Alsace, Sundgau, and Breisach ; but was 
obliged to secure to the imperial cities both their former privileges 
and their relations to the German empire. Sweden received Upper 
Pomerania, the island of Bugen, and the towns of Stettin, Weismar, 
&c, the bishoprics of Bremen and Verdun, and an indemnification in 
money. Brandenburg obtained the eastern part of Lower Pomerania, 
with the bishoprics of Magdeburg, TIalberstadt, Minden, &c. Saxony 
was indemnified by Lusatia ; other princes with other cities, founda- 
tions, and bishoprics. Bavaria remained in possession of the Upper 
Palatinate and of the electoral dignity ; and the Palatinate of the 
Bhine, with the eighth electoral dignity, was restored to Charles 
Louis, the son of Frederick V. who died in the year 1632. The 
remaining princes and Estates retained their former possessions ; and 
Switzerland and the Low Countries were acknoAvledged as inde- 
pendent states. 

With regard to the affairs of the Church, it was arranged, after 
long disputes, that the treaty of Passau, and the religious peace of 
Augsburg, should be confirmed to the Protestants, the " spiritual 
proviso" abolished, and the peace extended to the Calvinists. In 
regard to the possession of ecclesiastical property, and the right of 
free exercise of religion, the year 1624 was taken as the standard. 
Every thing was to remain or to become what it had been at that 
time. At the same time, the privilege of reformation possessed by 
the princes ceased, and a free exercise of religion and equal civd 
rights were assured to the three Christian confessions. 

The farther consequences of the Thirty Tears' War Avere : — 1. An 
increase of the power of the princes, which was the occasion of ex- 
pensive courts, standing armies, a multitude of officials, and a high 
and regularly levied taxation. 2. A purity of faith in the Church, 
which was not founded upon mere warmth of religious feeling, but 



272 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

upon an unalterable veneration for the literal meaning of the Sym- 
bolical Books. 3. A decay of trade, of industry, and of profitable 
commerce. Though agriculture revived again, and the plough and 
the mattock restored its former aspect to the desolated country, the 
aforetime prosperity of Germany never returned. Many of the 
trading towns sunk into poverty ; the imperial towns were gradually 
overtaken by the princely residences ; and trade, industry, and wealth, 
established their seats in Holland and England. German art and 
literature decayed ; every thing native was neglected, and fashions, 
language, and poetry, borrowed from the French. From this period, 
the old German nationality succumbed to the influence of foreigners. 

d. SWEDEN UNDER CHRISTINA AND CHARLES X. CHANGE IN THE 
CONSTITUTION OF DENMARK. 

§ 384. After the premature death of Gustavus Adolphus, the 
crown devolved upon his daughter Christina, during whose minority 
the government was conducted by a senate, and the opportunity 
made use of to increase the privileges and property of the noble 
families. When the queen herself assumed the govern- 
ment, she assembled around her a brilliant court, sum- 
moned artists and learned men out of all the countries of Europe to 
Stockholm, and displayed a masculine spirit and character in every 
thing. Her taste for art and her love of science found little support 
in the Protestant North, and she consequently never felt herself at 
home there. It was on this account, that after a reign of ten years, 
Christina abdicated the throne of Sweden in favour of 
her cousin, Charles Gustavus of Pfalz-Zweibrucken, 
reserved an annuity for herself, and quitted the land of her fathers. 
She was solemnly admitted into the Roman Catholic Church at Ins- 
bruck; she then travelled through the Netherlands, France, and Italy, 
and at length established her permanent residence in a town filled 
with all the splendour of art — Eome. She died there in 16S9. 
Charles X. § ^85. Christina's successor, Charles (X.) Gustavus, 

a.d. 1054 — was a great warrior. He undertook a campaign for the 
conquest of Poland, and made himself master of the 
western territories of that country, in conjunction with the great 
elector, Frederick William, of Brandenburg, to whom, in return, he 
promised the liberation of Prussia from the suzerainship of Poland. 
He would have gained possession of the whole country 
after the three days' battle of Warsaw, had not an inroad 
of the Danes into the territory of Sweden called him to a different 
scene. He left Poland, and marched with restless haste to the Lower 
Elbe. The Danish army opposed no resistance, so that before the 
commencement of the winter, Slcswic and Jutland, with the excep- 
tion of the fortress of Fredericia, were in the hands of the Swedes. 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 273 

This fortress also was stormed in the midst of winter by so daring an 
enterprise, that the king became jealous, and attempted to eclipse 
the exploit of his general by one still more venturous. He crossed 
with his army on foot, over the frozen channel of the Little Belt, in 
January, into Funen, and a few days after he passed the Great Belt 
into Zealand, in which passage two companies were drowned before 
his eyes. Here such confusion was occasioned by the sudden ap- 
pearance of the enemy, that defence was scarcely thought of, and 
proposals for peace were at once entered into. But great as were 
the sacrifices that the hardly-pressed Danish king offered to make, 
they were rejected by Charles, who hoped to bring the three Scandi- 
navian kingdoms under his own sceptre. But the gallant attitude of 
the citizens of Copenhagen, who, for a whole twelvemonth bade 
defiance to the besieging Swedes, and the assistance of the Dutch, 
prolonged the war till the sudden death of the king gave a turn to 
affairs. The Swedish Diet that conducted the government during the 
minority of Charles XI. concluded the peace of Oliva with the Poles, 
,„„ and that of Copenhagen with the Danes. So great at that 

A.D. 1660. . L n , -T, t -n j. , 1 c< 1 

time was the respect ior the military skill ol the bwedes, 
that Sweden obtained large territories and important advantages by 
both these peaces. Prussia's independence of Poland was acknow- 
ledged. This war, in which the Danish nobility who were in posses- 
sion of great privileges and revenues made an open display of their 
cowardice and selfishness, was made use of by the court to overthrow 
the existing constitution. The elective monarchy was converted into 
an hereditary one, and unlimited power conferred upon the king by 
the royal law. The nobility lost their former power and independent 
position, and were bound to the throne by titles and orders. In 
Sweden also, the vast power of the nobility was broken by the politic 
Charles XL, an d severe Charles XL, who rigidly demanded back the 
a.d. 1660— alienated possessions of the crown; the ancient institutions 
he, however, allowed to remain. 

2. THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND AND THE EXPULSION OE THE 

STUARTS. 
a. THE EIEST TWO STUARTS (JAMES I. 1603 — 1625, CHARLES I. 

1625—1649.) 

James I § 386 - Mary's son, James I., was a weak and pedantic 

a.d. 1603— prince, of narrow mind and perverted mental constitution. 
1625. Bred, up amidst the contentions of Presbyterian preachers, 

he was especially furnished with theological learning, and willingly 
engaged in controversies respecting disputed points of divinity. He 
was extremely desirous of gaining the reputation of a deeply learned 
man both by his writing and conversation, and composed many books, 
but he was utterly wanting in the penetration and shrewdness neces- 

T 



274 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

sary iu a rider. A lover of peace from timidity, he sacrificed the 
honour of his country to its external quiet, and he was so prodigal of 
his favour as frequently to give himself up entirely to the guidance 
of unworthy favourites. Among these, George Villiers, duke of 
Buckingham, distinguished by the symmetry of his figure, exercised 
the greatest influence upon him. James entertained the most ex- 
travagant notions respecting the kingly power. He was firmly per- 
suaded that it was derived immediately from God, and that it was 
unlimited ; and he sought for proofs of this in the Old Testament. 
It was on this account that he hated the Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland, Avhere the king was nothing more than an ordinary member 
of the congregation, but was devoted to the Episcopal Church of Eng- 
land, in which the king was regarded as the head and source of all 
spiritual power. "No bishop no king" became therefore the motto 
of all the Stuarts, and the introduction of the Episcopal Church into 
Scotland, and the suppression of the Puritans in England, was, hence- 
forth, the great object of the whole family. 

§ 387. There are three points particularly worthy of notice in the 
reign of James ; the gunpowder plot, the nuptial expedition of the 
prince of Wales, and the increasing opposition in parliament. 1. 
James had promised toleration to the English Catholics for the pur- 
pose of rendering them favourable to his ascension of the throne. 
Scarcely, however, was the crown firmly settled upon his head before 
he, like Elizabeth, levied a heavy capitation tax upon the Catholic non- 
conformists, that he might enrich his favourites, and defray the ex- 
penses of his court festivals. The deluded Catholics were exasperated. 
A conspiracy was formed for blowing up the king and all the mem- 
bers of the Upper and Lower House at the opening of parliament, 
by means of a mine of gunpoAvder to be formed in the cellar of 
the parliament-house, and then for changing the government. The 
plot Avas discovered and frustrated a short time before its execution, 
by a warning in writing received by a Catholic peer. The chief con- 
spirator (EaAvkes) was seized and executed ; the other participators 
in the plot fled, and excited an insurrection, in which most of them 
perished. The English Catholics Avere then compelled to pay a heavy 
fine and to take a particular oath of fidelity to the king. 2. James, in 
his conceit, thought that no one but the daughter of a king of the first 
rank Avas a fit spouse for his son, and accordingly made proposals for 
the hand of one of the Spanish princesses. This project excited great 
( I i-content among the English, both because they \vere unAvilling to 
have a Catholic queen, and because the lengthened negotiations Avith 
Spain that were occasioned by it prevented the king from giving any 
assistance to his exiled Protestant son-in-law, Frederick V. of the 
Palatinate (§ 373). At length the pope and the Spanish court gave 
their consent, and there appeared to be nothing more to prevent the 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 275 

union. At this point, the frivolous Buckingham persuaded prince 
Charles to make a voyage to Madrid, and the king, who in his youth 
had surprised his Danish bride in a similar manner, favoured the 
undertaking. They arrived at Madrid under assumed names, and 
were treated when recognized with great distinction. But Bucking- 
ham's loose and insolent behaviour gave offence. He made enemies 
of the Spanish court and prevented the marriage. Henrietta of 
France became the wife of Charles. 3. Elizabeth had given but 
little liberty to the parliament ; but the greatness of her talents for 
government, and her frugal administration, had afforded the people 
a compensation. But when James, in the conviction of his kingly 
perfection, pursued the same path, abridged more and more the privi- 
leges of the parliament, burthened the importation and exportation 
of every kind of goods with arbitrary taxes, a vehement opposition 
arose. It was in vain the king threatened, repeatedly dissolved the 
parliament, and placed the boldest speakers under arrest ; every fresh 
assembly held the same language ; and when James at length declared 
that their supposed rights were nothing but privileges for which they 
were indebted to the royal grace, the members of the Lower House 
registered a protest, by which they declared that the making of laws, 
,_„ the consenting to taxes, and the other befitting rights and 

A.D. 1621. . to ' & . *=> 

privileges of parliament, were the undoubted native rights 
and inheritance of every Englishman. Enraged at this audacity, the 
king tore the leaf with his own hand from the register, dissolved the 
parliament, and ordered a few deputies to be imprisoned ; but the 
spirit of resistance remained alive among the people, and displayed 
itself still more violently, when Charles I., a proud and obstinate 
ruler, took possession of the throne. 

Charles I., § 388. The government of Charles I. began with so 

a.d. 1625— violent a quarrel with the parliament that the latter was 
twice dissolved during the first two years of his reign. 
The support afforded to the Grerman Protestants, and a war with 
France occasioned by the fickle Buckingham, occasioned great ex- 
penses. The king was consequently extremely indignant that the 
parliament was sparing in voting supplies, and had not once during 
his whole government consented to the levying of tonnage and 
poundage upon exports and imports, as had hitherto been the custom. 
But when the French war took a disastrous termination, and the blood 
and honour of England were ignominiously sacrificed, the third par- 
,„™ liament threatened Buckingham with an impeachment, 

A.D. 1628. XI- • • ITT 

the king, to save his favourite, was obliged to recognize 
the validity of the Petition of Bight presented by both houses, and by 
this means to grant its ancient privileges to the parliament, and liberty 
of speech and security of person and property to its mem- 
bers. Buckingham was shortly after assassinated, upon 
T 2 



276 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

which the king removed Thomas Wentworth, an eloquent member of 
the opposition, from parliament into the privy council, made him earl of 
Strafford and governor of Ireland, and followed his advice in everything. 
Wentworth, an ambitious and energetic man, now exerted his most 
zealous efforts to strengthen the power of the throne, and with this 
object, advised the king to govern for some time without a parliament. 
For the purpose of raising money for the current expenses, the 
government levied the usual imposts without the consent of the 
Estates, laid heavy indirect taxes upon light, wine, salt, soap, and 
similar articles, and revived ancient and obsolete claims of the throne, 
such as ship-money, which in former times had replenished the royal 
treasury. Charles, at the same time, endeavoured to establish the 
Anglican Church on a firmer foundation, and to suppress the Puritans 
and Presbyterians whose democratic opinions were every day extend- 
ing among the people. In this undertaking he made use of the 
sendees of Bishop Laud of London, whom he appointed to the arch- 
bishopric of Canterbury. Laud had the cathedral of St. Paul's conse- 
crated afresh, enriched the churches with images and ornaments, and the 
worship of God with ceremonies, removed the Puritan preachers from 
their offices, and had heavy and degrading punishments pronounced 
by the spiritual courts (the High Commission and the judges of the- 
Star Chamber) against all those who opposed the existing institutions. 
Thus Prynne, a Puritan writer, was condemned to be exposed in the 
pillory, to lose both his ears, and to be imprisoned for life, because, 
in a bulky volume he had written, he had condemned dancing, masks, 
and theatrical amusements, matters in which the court delighted. 

§ 389. These measures, which threatened to annihilate the civil and 
religious liberties of England, excited a great commotion over the 
whole country. John Hampden, a man of considerate and resolute 
character, refused payment of the ship-money, and conducted his de- 
fence before a court of justice so successfully, that the injustice of 
the government became most apparent. The deposed Puritan minis- 
ters wandered about the country representing the proceedings of 
Laud as the commencement of the restoration of Catholicism, and, 
by their passionate exhortations strewed the seeds of hatred against 
the court and the clergy. But the king retained his resolution ; and, 
unwarned by the discontent openly expressed in England, he even 
attempted to introduce the Episcopal Church and the Anglican form 
of worship into Scotland, a country ever zealous for its faith. When 
the first attempt at celebrating divine service under the new form 
was math; in the cathedral church of Edinburgh, a tumult arose against 
the performance of the "worship of Baal." The crowd shouted 
" P°P e •" " Antichrist ! " " Stone him ! " hurled seats at the 
priest, and drove him from the building. The old Cove- 
nant " for the protection of the pure religion and the Church against 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 277 

the errors and corruptions of Popery" was renewed amidst fasting and 
prayer. The bishops were driven away, the Presbyterian form of 
worship restored, and the people called to arms. Upon this, Charles 
determined to put down resistance by force ; but his troops gave way 
powerless before the zealous Scots, who marched into the field with 
prayer and psalmody ; the hostile squadrons crossed the English 
borders, and nothing was left to the king but to call to- 
gether the parliament after an interval of eleven years, 
and to ask the assistance of the nation. 

§ 390. The parliament now summoned is known in history under 
the name of the Long Parliament. The most influential members 
and speakers, as Hampden, Hollis, Hazelrig, Cromwell, &c, were 
opposed to absolute monarchical power and Episcopal Church govern- 
ment ; they wanted security for the ancient privfleges of the Estates, 
and for religious liberty. But during their contest against the abso- 
lute power of kings and bishops, they separated from each other : the 
more violent gradually acquired the democratical views of the Puritans ; 
and whilst they mingled civil and religious freedom together, they 
aimed at an object that was only attainable in a free republican 
commonwealth. The new parliament immediately assumed a hostile 
attitude against the court and government. Instead of at once voting 
supplies against the Scottish rebels, the parliament entered into a 
secret alliance with them, and was the cause that they maintained 
their position on the frontiers. It then commenced its attack upon 
the arbitrary proceedings in Church and State. Strafford, " the great 
apostate," and Archbishop Laud, were impeached. It was in vain 
that the king, for the purpose of saving them, yielded to all the 
demands of the house, it was in vain that Strafford defended himself 
for seventeen days with dignity and presence of mind, and proved, in 
the most convincing manner, that the charges brought against him 
coidd not be regarded as high treason — the Lower House declared 
that he must be considered as convicted of an attempt to destroy the 
liberties of the country ; the Upper House embraced the same opinion, 
and the king had the weakness to confirm the sentence, and to sacri- 
fice the most faithful of his servants to the rage of the people. Straf- 
ford died upon the scaffold with great composure. Laud, 
May 11, 1641. , . £...-.„. 5 , . /,, . 

his companion m misfortune, was retained three years m 

confinement, before his life also was put an end to by the axe of the 
executioner. The abolition of the spiritual courts, and the exclusion 
of the bishops from the Upper House, were the forerunners of the 
fall of the Episcopal High Church. 

§ 391. Shortly after this, intelligence got abroad that the Protest- 
ant settlers in Ireland had been set upon and murdered by the 
Catholic inhabitants. This event was laid to the charge of the court, 
and especially of the queen, and made use of as a proof that Papists, 



278 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

bishops, and courtiers, had united in a conspiracy for the destruction 
of religion and liberty. From this point, the struggle assumed more 
and more of a religious character ; and as the parliament now over- 
stepped the limits of a monarchical constitution in their demands, 
inasmuch as they interfered with the prerogatives of government, and 
required that the appointment of the higher officers of state, and of 
the commanders of the army, together with the management of the 
land and sea forces, should be dependent upon their approval, the two 
parties became more decidedly adverse. The people called the ad- 
herents of the king, who were mostly noblemen and officers, " Cava- 
liers ;" they distinguished their opponents, however, by the nickname 
of Roundheads, from the cut of their hair. The attempt of the king 
to arrest five of the most violent leaders of the opposition during a 
debate failed. They fled, but were brought back the next day to the 
parliament-house in triumph by the people. Enraged at this, Charles 
C '1 W r retired to York and declared war. The queen fled to 
a.d. 1642— Holland to claim foreign assistance; but as the whole 
1646. military force of the Continent was engaged in the 

Thirty Tears' War, no help could be obtained. The war commenced 
with unequal means for the contest. For whilst the king was unpro- 
vided with money, and his army suffered from every kind of want, the 
parliament was in possession not only of all the public revenue, but 
was amply supported by private contributions. At the first sum- 
mons, famfiies brought their plate, women their ornaments ; and 
every tax and impost that had been obstinately contested with the 
king, was cheerfully surrendered to the parliament. Charles's small 
but practised army was nevertheless at first successful against 
the parliamentary forces that were led into the field by the earl of 
Essex. In two encounters, the royal cavalry, which was commanded 
by Charles's nephew, Rupert of the Palatinate, gained the advantage. 
In the commencement of the second year, the parliament also ex- 
perienced losses, among which, the death of the upright and gallant 
Hampden was the most severely felt. But when Oliver Cromwell, a 
zealous Puritan, formed a resolute band of cavalry from amongst his 
devout friends, which, in the cause of God, rushed blindly into the 
T i ., *n t . fiffht, matters assumed a different aspect. In the battle 

July i, J 044. „ . . 

of Marston Moor, Rupert, by his impetuosity, lost the 
victory to Cromwell's gloomy squadrons. From this time the name 
of Cromwell stood uppermost in the army, and the Puritans took 
advantage of the favourable opportunity to banish the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer from Divine Avorship, and to thrust aside Episcopacy 
by the C;il\ inistic discipline and the synodial form of Church govern- 
ment. Images, ornaments, organs, and so forth, disappeared from 
the churches, painted windows were broken, monuments destroyed, 
and festivals forbidden. 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 279 

§ 392. But divisions soon arose in the camp of the conquerors. 
The Independents, the boldest and most energetic of the Puritans, 
were discontented with the synodial constitution of the Presbyterians, 
they demanded the entire independence, in religious matters, of every 
individual congregation, and refused to recognize the decisions of the 
synods as laws universally valid. Violent contests took place between 
the moderate Puritans (Presbyterians), and the Radicals (Independ- 
February, ents). The latter passed the self-deuying ordinance 
1645. through the parliament, in virtue of which, no member of 

either house could fill any place of command or official situation. 
Essex was, by this means, compelled to lay down his military office, 
and Fairfax, a talented officer, entirely under the influence of Crom- 
well, was placed at the head of the army. Cromwell, the head of the 
Independents, had been one of the most zealous advocates of the 
self-denying ordinance. He repaired to the army to resign his com- 
mand into the hands of Fairfax ; but the latter at once gave the 
parliament to understand that Cromwell was indispensable — it was 
only he who could lead the cavalry ; for where he fought, in the name 
of Grod, along with his pious squadron, there the victory was sure to 
be. Parliament consented, and the civil war burst forth afresh 
with redoubled violence. But the battle of Naseby 
' destroyed the last hopes of Charles : he retreated with 
the remains of his army to Oxford. But when Cromwell and Pair- 
fax prepared to besiege him there, he embraced a desperate resolu- 
tion ; disguised as a servant, he escaped with two attendants to the 
Scottish camp on the Northern frontier, in the hope of finding truth 
and attachment among his own countrymen. But all sympathy for 
fallen greatness was extinguished in the bosom of the Scots, who 
were guided entirely by their austere clergy. They watched him 
narrowly, and compelled him to attend the lengthened discourses of 
then ministers, whose usual text was the misdeeds of himself and his 
ancestors ; and when they found that it was impossible to prevail 
upon him to accept the Presbyterian faith, or to subscribe the Cove- 
nant, they sold their king for a small price. Por a moderate sum of 
money, Charles was delivered up to the commissioners of 
parliament, who confined him in a strong castle. 
§ 393. In the mean time, the division between the Presbyterians, 
who were the superior party in the parliament, and the Independents, 
who prevailed in the army, became every day greater. Cromwell was 
on the side of the latter ; but he knew well how to conceal the false- 
hood of his heart by an outward appearance of sanctimony 1 . Whilst 

1 The character given by Weber in the text to Cromwell cannot be regarded as an 
impartial one. Cromwell's behaviour was certainly not always distinguished by per- 
fect candour, but his worst enemies will scarcely deny that his religious professions 
were, in a great measure, sincere. — Translator. 



280 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

he was playing the part of a mediator, the captive Charles was carried 
off by a zealous tailor, with a troop of horse, and delivered up into 
the power of the army. Upon this, Cromwell marched 
upon the capital for the purpose of giving the Independ- 
ents the superiority in parliament also. In the mean while, the king 
November, escaped to the Isle of "Wight; and both Presbyterians and 
lfi48. Independents sougbt, for some time, to gain him over to 

their own side, and to make their peace with him in return for certain 
concessions. But Charles, who relied upon foreign assistance, con- 
ducted himself in a deceitful and ambiguous manner, and thus 
deprived himself of the last chance of a peaceful release. Cromwell 
now resolved upon his destruction. The army, acting under his 
secret directions, made itself master of the king's person, and con- 
ducted him to a solitary castle on the sea-coast. Colonel Pride then 
surrounded the parliament-house with his troops, and commanded 
December eighty-one of the Presbyterian members to be carried off 
16 J 8. by force. After this proceeding, which was known by 

the name of " Pride's Purge," Cromwell took possession of the royal 
apartments in Whitehall, — for he was now lord and ruler, and the 
so-called Eiunp Parliament, which consisted of Independents, was a 
mere passive tool in his hand. It was determined to accuse the king 
of treason before an extraordinary court, for having made war against 
the parliament. " Charles Stuart" was four times put upon his trial, 
and condemned to death as a traitor, murderer, and enemy of his 
country. He was allowed three days to prepare himself, and to take 
leave of his children. He was then led forth upon a scaffold con- 
structed in front of Whitehall, and covered with black, where the 
January 30, sentence was carried into execution by two masked exe- 
1G49. cutioners. An innumerable multitude gazed in silence 

upon the frightful scene. It was only when the executioner seized 
the blood-dropping head by the hair, and exclaimed, " This is the head 
of a traitor!" that the assembled people relieved their oppressed 
bosoms by a hollow groan. 

h. OLIVER CROMWELL (A.D. 1649 1658). 

§ 394. The intelligence of the king's death excited a fearful sensa- 
tion in Ireland and Scotland. The Prince of Wales, who was living 
in Holland, Avas recalled thither and acknowledged as 
Charles II., but was obliged, beforehand, to sign the 
Covenant and enter the Presbyterian Church. Ireland also acknow- 
ledged the new king and flew to arms. Upon this, Cromwell, after 
arranging a republican government in England, in which Milton, the 
blind composer of" Paradise Lost," occupied a post, marched against 
the disobedient island. His path to victory laid over blood and 
corpses, and when he himself left the country to carry the sword into 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 281 

Scotland, other republican generals pursued the same course. In 
three years the threatening rebellion was quelled ; but Ireland became 
a depopulated country of lawless beggars, where the avenger of blood 
established his fearful dwelling. The arms of the republic were 
triumphant in Scotland also. The Scottish army had occupied a 
stong position which Cromwell could not reach. Hunger and sick- 
ness soon diminished the number of his troops, so that he was already 
meditating a retreat. At this juncture, the preachers who accom- 
panied the Scottish army, and who were annoyed by the cheerful 
military life and the hilarity of the king and his associates, advised 
the commanders to make an attack. When Cromwell beheld the 
movement in the Presbyterian army, he exclaimed, " They are coming 
down, the Lord has delivered them into our hands !" The battle of 
Dunbar, fought upon Cromwell's birthday, September 
3rd, terminated in the defeat of the Scots. Cromwell 
took Edinburgh, and penetrated into the heart of the country. The 
Lord of Hosts, who was invoked both by Presbyterians and Inde- 
pendents with fasting and prayer and hypocritical lip-service, was 
with the bold and strong. Charles suddenly hazarded a daring under- 
taking. He marched with his troops across the English border, and 
called upon the adherents of royalty for support. Pew joined him, 
September 3, an d thus it happened that the royal army suffered a com- 
1651. plete overthrow at Worcester, exactly a twelvemonth 

after the battle of Dunbar. This battle made Charles a houseless 
fugitive, for whose capture the parliament offered a large reward. 
He escaped in disguise to Prance, after a thousand dangers and 
adventures. Scotland was compelled to submit to the republican 
government by General Monk. The free state of England was also 
involved in a war with Holland. During this, the republicans showed 
that they were not only victorious on land, but powerful at sea. 
Greatly as the maritime heroes of Holland, Tromp and Euyter, dis- 
tinguished themselves by their courage and ability, Admiral Blake, a 
man of the old republican stamp, and of rude virtues, and General 
Monk, who was equally experienced in land and naval warfare, suc- 
ceeded at length in carrying off the victory. The Dutch were obliged 
to consent to a disgraceful peace, whilst the Navigation Act, which 
was proclaimed in England during the war, and which prohibited 
October, foreigners from bringing any thing but their own produc- 

1651. tions to England in their own ships, gave a fresh impulse 

to commerce. 

§ 395. During these proceedings, Cromwell had fallen out with 

the Lower House, and for this reason he resolved upon dissolving the 

Long (Eiimp) parliament. After surrounding the house with troops, 

he entered the apartment in his dark puritanical dress, 

pn ' delivered a discourse which was filled with invectives, 



282 TIIE MODERN EPOCH. 

and then, with the help of the soldiers who had entered, drove forth 
those who were present, exclaiming to one, "You are a drunkard;" 
to another, " You are an adulterer;" to a third, "You are a blas- 
phemer of God !" A state council, under the presidentship of Crom- 
well, then undertook the formation of a new parliament. For this 
purpose, lists of all the God-fearing people were made out in every 
quarter, and from these " saints" the representatives of the kingdom 
were chosen. This assembly (named in mockery, Barebones' parlia- 
ment, from the leather-seller, Praise-God Barebones), soon gave evi- 
dence of its disposition and religious views by the Biblical surnames 
of the greater number of its members (Habakkuk, Ezekiel, Stand-fast- 
in-the-Faith, &c). But Cromwell was not able to manage these 
strange men so easily as he had hoped ; and as they wished to intro- 
duce several vigorous measures, which wovdd have produced great 
changes, he took advantage of the openly-displayed discontent to 
December effect a violent dissolution by means of his soldiers. After 
1053. this, a new constitution, projected by General Lambert, 

came into existence, in which a parliament of 400 members composed 
the legislative body, and Cromwell, as Lord Protector, possessed the 
executive power and the command of the land and sea forces. As 
Protector, Cromwell governed energetically and gloriously. His 
talents for government and his strength of will procured him respect 
and authority abroad, and his respectable household, and his frugal 
and citizen-like mode of life, awakened esteem and confidence at 
home. But honourably as he filled the lofty situation in Avhich fate 
had placed him, he nevertheless found many enviers and opponents 
both among the republicans and royalists, who embittered the evening 
of his life, and never suffered him to attain to a quiet possession of 
the government. Rendered gloomy by suspicion, and in constant 
September 3, f eal * of assassination, Cromwell died on his birthday, a 
1658. J a y that he had always regarded as particularly fortunate. 

§ 396. Cromwell's imbecile son inherited the dignity of Lord Pro- 
tector, which, however, he did not know how to maintain. Three 
powers were soon arrayed in hostile opposition, the protector, the 
parliament, and the army, commanded by Monk, Lambert, and others. 
The military power was victorious ; the parliament was dissolved, and 
the old Hump parliament again summoned ; Richard Cromwell, who 
was neither a soldier nor a prayer, was obliged to abdicate, and to 
seek for safety in a foreign land. But the Rump parlia- 
ment was also obliged to yield in a short time to the 
power of the army; upon which, the direction of affairs was undertaken 
by a committee of safety under the presidentship of Lambert. During 
all these constitutional struggles, the opinion gradually gamed ground 
that nothing but the return of the royal family, and the re-establish- 
ment of monarchy, could effect the permanent re-establishment of 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 283 

order. For this purpose, General Monk entered into an alliance with 
Charles Stuart, who was living in the Netherlands, but concealed his 
plans and opinions most carefully. He obtained the arrest of Lam- 
bert, the dissolution of the committee of safety, and the assembly of 
a new parliament. With this assembly, which consisted for the most 
part of royalists, Monk hastened to effect the restoration of the 
Stuarts. An amnesty, and liberty of conscience, were all that Charles 
had to promise before his solemn entrance into London, 
' where he was received by an exulting people. But even 
these conditions were not observed. Sentence of death was pro- 
nounced upon all those who had sat in judgment upon Charles I., 
and ten of them were actually executed as regicides. The triumph 
of the royalists at the destruction of their enemies was much dimi- 
nished by the resolution displayed by the Puritans in their last mo- 
ments. Cromwell's body was torn from the grave and suspended on 
the gallows. The Episcopal Church was restored, and the Presby- 
terian clergy again deprived of their places. 

C. TIIE LAST TWO STTTAKTS (CHARLES II. 1660 — 1685, AND 

james ii. 1685—1688). 

§ 397. The government of the fickle, characterless, and voluptuous 
Charles was fatal to England. Neither the fate of his father, nor the 
melancholy passages in his own life served him either for instruction 
or warning. Severely as the land was visited by the plague, and by a 
frightful conflagration that destroyed two-thirds of London, no inter- 
ruption was given to the splendid and joyous life that was led by the 
royal court ; and when extravagant expenditure had produced debts and 
want of money, and the parliament was not so free in its grants as the 
king desired, Charles sold the honour and interests of his country to 
the Erench king, Louis XIV. At that time especially, it was looked 
upon as a mark of refinement in Erance if a man left the Protestant 
Church for the Catholic. This way of thinking found some imitation 
in England. The duke of York, the brother of the king, openly em- 
braced Catholicism, and Charles was a Catholic in heart, although he 
outwardly conformed to the English Church, and only betrayed his 
real convictions when on his death-bed, by receiving the Catholic 
sacraments. The more, however, the Stuarts favoured; Catholicism, 
the more sturdily did the people adhere to the faith of their fathers. 
The fire of London was attributed by them to the Papists, and this 
belief was perpetuated' by a monument ; and lest the public offices 
should be made use of as rewards for these changes of religion, the 
parliament, after a long contest, carried the Test Act, which enacted 
that no one but members of the English Church, and confessors of 
the Protestant doctrine should be capable of admission into parlia- 
ment or of holding offices or military posts. As long as Clarendon, 



284 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

the historian of the English "rebellion," remained at the head of the 
ministry, the king was in some degree restrained within the bounds 
of moderation and legality ; but when the former fell into disgrace, 
and was compelled to end his days as an outlaw in a foreign country, 
Charles allowed himself to commit acts of all kinds of violence, 
tyranny, and lawlessness. A ministry that was formed of talented 
but unprincipled statesmen, and distinguished by the people as the 
Cabal Ministry from the initials of its members, now conducted the 
government according to the wishes of the king, without regard to 
the privileges and honour of the people. Corruption and venality 
were no longer regarded as disgraceful among the higher classes, 
since the king himself drew a yearly stipend from Louis XIV. for 
supporting the French in their war against the Dutch. A new con- 
test at this time sprung up between the king and the parliament. 
For the more openly the former strove for absolute power, the more 
did the latter endeavour to protect the privileges of the people and 
the religion of the country. The parliament, anxious lest the English 
Church should be exposed to danger under a Catholic king, demanded 
the exclusion of the duke of York from the throne ; and Charles 
found himself so far obliged to yield, that he sent his brother out of 
the country for some time, and formed a new ministry, in which the 
ingenious earl of Shaftesbury, who had gone over from the king's 
council to the popular party, was the president. It was 
under his administration that the Habeas Corpus Act, 
that sacred law for the freedom of person, came into existence. Accord- 
ing to this act, no one could be imprisoned, without a written order 
of the court stating the grounds of the imprisonment ; and within 
three days the prisoner was to be brought before the ordinary judges. 
In the midst of these parliamentary struggles, two parties sprang up, 
the Whigs and the Tories, that exist to the present day. The "Whigs 
regarded the constitution of the state as a mutual compact between 
the king and the nation, and attributed to the latter the right of 
active resistance in case of any infringement of the compact ; the 
Tories, on the other hand, rejected the principle that the royal 
power proceeded from the people, and demanded passive obedience 
from the subject. The Tories gained the upper hand during the 
latter years of Charles II. 's reign, inasmuch as the court took advan- 
tage of a conspiracy contrived by some worthless men against the 
lives of the king and his brother, to ruin the heads of the Whig party. 
Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, two of the noblest and most 
respected of men, died upon the scaffold ; Shaftesbury fled to Holland ; 
I lie duke of York again regained his rights and offices; and when 
Charles died a few years afterwards without legitimate 
offspring, he ascended the English throne, under the title 
of James II. 



THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. Og5 

James II., § 398- A few weeks after James's ascension of the 

a.d. 1685 — throne, Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II., at- 

1 f»88 

tempted, by the aid of the Whigs, to deprive his uncle 
of the crown. The insurrection failed of success. Monmouth died 
on the scaffold, and the frightful cruelty that James displayed against 
all the supporters and abettors of the enterprise destroyed the last 
sparks of attachment in the hearts of the people. The name of the 
chief judge, Jeffreys, who passed through the counties with the 
axe of justice and a crew of executioners, is written with letters 
of blood in the annals of English history. The victory which he had 
gained so easily, and the terror of the people, induced the king to 
hope, that by cunning and severity he might gradually restore the 
Catholic religion to its former supremacy in England. "With this 
object, he made the detested Jeffreys chancellor, presented many 
offices and military appointments to the Catholics and those who had 
gone over to the Roman Church, and aimed at neutralizing the Test 
Act by the introduction of an edict of toleration. But as the parlia- 
ment, despite the bribery used in the elections, could not be brought 
to accept this edict, James attempted to destroy the Test Act by 
another plan ; he declared that the throne possessed the power of 
granting a dispensation from this law, a privilege by which the power 
and operation of all laws would have been paralyzed. The English 
people looked on quietly for some time at these proceedings, although 
with inward repugnance, inasmuch as the king being old and having 
no male descendants, and his two daughters having been brought up 
in the English Church and married to Protestant princes, the elder 
Maria, to William of Orange (§ 403), and the younger, Anne, to 
a Danish prince, they hoped for a speedy deliverance. But when the 
intelligence of the birth of a prince of Wales put an end to all hope 
of a release from the yoke of popery, they began to entertain the 
purpose of freeing themselves by their own efforts, with the assistance 
of William of Orange. The genuineness of the young prince was 
called in question ; crowds of discontented Britons streamed towards 
the Hague ; the Whigs united themselves with Orange, and promised 
him the support of the Protestant part of the nation. James did not 
perceive the storm that was gathering around his head, untd William 
had landed with a Dutch force on the shores of England, with the 
avowed purpose of defending the Protestant religion and the liberties 
of the country. It was in vain that the king now turned himself to 
the army and the people, and promised the removal of every measure 
repugnant to the Constitution ; the ground on which he stood had 
been rendered insecure by the treachery, hypocrisy, and perjury with 
which the Stuarts had rendered the nation familiar. When a part 
of the army went over to William, and the general voice declared 
itself against the king, James sent his wife and son to Prance, threw 



28(3 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

the great seal into the Thames, and then fled himself in despair from 
December, the land of his fathers, of whose fair crown he had de- 
1688. prived himself and his Catholic offspring. He lived from 

this time forth at St. Germain, a pensioner of Lonis XIV. 

§ 399. After the flight of James, the representatives of the English 
people declared the throne forsaken, and agreed that the Catholic 
line of the house of Stuart should be excluded from the government, 
and that this should be placed in the hands of the royal pair, "William 
and Mary. Instructed however by the past, they secured the liberties 
of the nation against any future arbitrary acts by the Bfll of Rights, 
without at the same time weakening overmuch the power of the 
king. The Scots acknowledged the new government, and regained 
their Presbyterian Church ; but the Catholic Irish, supported by 
tiii ron France, an d led i^o the field by James II. himself, were 
first compelled to submission by the bloody battle of the 
Boyne, and again curtaded of their privileges and property. Prom 
this time England, by her naval power, her trade, industry, and pros- 
a.d. 1701. perhty, took the lead of all other nations. "When a pre- 
Anne, a.d. mature death carried the sickly "William childless to the 
1701—1714. g rayej kg was succeeded by Anne, the younger daughter 
of James II., during whose reign the union between Scotland and 
England was completed, so that from this time, the Scot- 
tish representatives gave their voices in the English par- 
liament. Anne also survived the whole of her children, so that the 
English crown devolved upon the Elector, George of Hanover, the 
grandson of Elizabeth, Palgravine and Queen of Bohemia. Two 
attempts of the Stuarts to expel the house of Hanover by violence, 
and to repossess themselves of the English crown, terminated un- 
successfully. 

3. THE AGE OE LOUIS XIV. 
a. RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN. 

L ' XIII § ^®®- ^ ie ^ rs ^ P ar * °^ ^ ne re ^S n °f *he wea, k Loais 

a.d. 1610— XIII. , who only numbered nine years at the time of his 
1G43, father's murder (§ 365), was full of mischief for Prance. 

During the time the queen-mother, Mary of Medicis, conducted the 
government, Italian favourites exerted a great influence upon affairs, 
enriched themselves at the expense of the Prench, and irritated the 
pride of the nation by their insolence. Enraged at this, the nobility 
took up arms, and filled the country with rebellion and the tumult of 
Avar. "When at length Louis XIII. himself, upon coming of age, 
assumed the government, he indeed consented that the foreign 
favourites should be removed by murder and execution, and banished 
his mother from the court ; but the people gained little by it. The 
new favourites in whom the king, who possessed no self-reliance, 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 287 

reposed his confidence, were not distinguished from the former either 
by virtue or talents ; for this reason, both the nobles of the kingdom 
and the Huguenots, who felt themselves injured in their rights, 
again rose against the government, and threw the land into fresh 
confusion. This melancholy condition of affairs was only put an end 
to when Cardinal Richelieu was admitted into the state 
council, and introduced a complete change of system. 
This great statesman maintained an almost absolute sway in the 
court and in the kingdom for nearly eighteen years, though the 
king never loved him, the queen and the nobility were constantly 
attempting his overthrow, and a succession of cabals and conspiracies 
were plotted against him. The greatness of his mind triumphed over 
all obstacles. Richelieu's efforts were directed towards the extension 
and rounding of the French territory without, and the increasing and 
strengthening of the royal power within. In furtherance of the 
former of these objects, he sought to weaken the house of Hapsburg, 
and for this purpose entered into alliances with the enemies of the 
emperor not only in Germany, in the time of the Thirty Years' War, 
but in Italy and other places ; and, to attain his aims in regard to the 
latter project, he neglected to call together the Estates of the king- 
dom, broke the power of the nobility and of the independent officials 
and judges in the parliament, and attacked the Huguenots, who had 
formed an almost independent alliance in the south and west of 
France with their own fortresses, an effective militia, and great privi- 
leges. After conquering the most important of the Huguenot towns 
(Nimes, Montauban, Montpellier,) and destroying their fortifications, 
in three wars, and when he had at length taken Rochelle, the bul- 
wark of the Calvinists, after a siege of fourteen months, he proceeded 
to deprive the Protestants of their political privileges and of their 
independent position, but granted them, by the Edict of Nimes, 
liberty of conscience and equal rights with Catholic subjects. The 
turbulent nobles had been deprived of their greatest support by the 
disarming of the Huguenots, and the war could now be prosecuted 
against them with success. The most daring were got rid of by 
banishment and the executioner. Even the queen-mother and her 
second son, the duke of Orleans, who had attempted to procure the fall 
of Richelieu, were compelled to leave the country, and the confi- 
dential friend of the latter, Henry, duke of Montmorency, a scion of 
one of the most renowned families of Erance, died at Toulouse by the 
hand of the executioner. A similar fate awaited the count 
of Cinq- Mars and his friend, De Thou, a few years later, 
when, in conjunction with the queen and some of the nobles, they 
formed a conspiracy against the mighty cardinal. The parliament, 
the upper tax-offices and courts of justice, which, like the king, 
claimed an independent authority on account of their offices being 



288 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

hereditary, were weakened by the establishment of extraordinary 
courts and higher officers, who were dependent upon the minister. 

§ 101. In the year 1642 died Richelieu, hated and feared by the 
nobility and the people, but admired by contemporaries and pos- 
terity ; Louis XIII., a prince without either great virtues or great 
vices, and dependent upon every one who could either acquire his 
favour or render himself formidable to him, soon followed him. Anna, 
queen of Austria, the proud and ambitious sister of the king of Spain, 
Louis XIV., undertook the government during the minority of his son. 
a. d. 1643— But as she reposed the whole of her confidence on the 
Italian, Mazarin, the inheritor of the office and the prin- 
ciples of Richelieu, she met with vehement opposers among the 
nobility and in the parliament, who attempted to regain their former 
power and position. The people, in the hope of being relieved of 
some of their heavy taxes, and guided by the clever and dexterous 
Cardinal Retzch, embraced their cause, with the intent of com- 
pelling the court to remove Mazarin, and to adopt a different plan of 
a.d. 1648— government. This gave occasion to a furious civil war, 
16o3. which is known in history as " the "War of the Fronde." 

Mazarin was obliged to leave the country for a short time, but so 
immoveable was the favour and confidence of the queen, that he 
governed France from Cologne as he had formerly done in Paris. 
But his banishment did not last long. When Louis XIV. had at- 
tained the years of kingly majority, and Turenne, the commander of 
the royal troops, had conquered his rival, the great Conde, the general 
of the insurgents, in the suburb of St. Antoine, Mazarin returned in 
triumph. His solemn entry into Paris was a sign that 
absolute power had gained the victory, and that hence- 
forth the will of the monarch was to be law. Mazarin enjoyed for 
six years longer the greatest respect in Prance and Europe ; Cardinal 
Retsch, the ingenious composer of the Memoirs of this war, was 
obliged to leave his country after he had previously expiated his 
turbulent conduct in the prison of Vincennes ; Conde, poor and un- 
happy, wandered among the Spaniards, till the grace of his master 
allowed him to return and take possession of his estates ; Mazarin' s 
nieces, Italian females without name or position, were endowed with 
the wealth of Prance, and sought for as brides by the greatest nobles ; 
and the members of parliament adapted themselves without oppo- 
sition to the directions they received from above, after Louis had 
appeared before them in his boots and riding whip, and demanded 
their obedience with threats. Louis would now give effect to his 
principle, "I am the state" (l'etat e'est moi). The peace of the 
a.d. 1659. Pyrenees with Spain was the last work of Mazarin. He 
March 9, a * e d shortly after, leaving enormous wealth behind him. 
1661. His death took place at the moment when Louis began 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 289 

to grow weary of him, and was longing to seize the reins of govern- 
ment in his own powerful grasp. 

i. GOVERNMENT AND CONQUESTS OE LOUIS XIV. 

§ 402. After the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV., in whom kingly 
absolutism attained its highest point, appointed no prime minister, 
but surrounded himself with men who merely executed his will, and 
whose highest aim was to increase and spread abroad the renown, 
glory, and honour of the king. In the choice of these men, Louis 
displayed judgment and the talents of a rider. His ministers, espe- 
cially Colbert, the great promoter of French industry, manufactures, 
and trades, as well as his generals, Turenne, Conde, Luxemburg, and 
the engineer, Vauban, as much surpassed in talent, acquirements, and 
dexterity, the statesmen and soldiers of all other countries, as Louis 
XIV. himself was pre-eminent among the princes of his age, in the 
greatness of his power, in commanding presence, and kingly dignit}^. 
He rendered the age of Louis XIV. the most fllustrious in the 
Trench annals, and caused the court of Versailles (the seat of the 
royal residence) to be every where praised and admired as the model 
of taste, of refinement, and of a distinguished mode of living. But as 
he sought nothing but the gratification of his own selfishness, of his 
own love of pleasure, of his pride, and of his desire for renown and 
splendour, his reign became the grave of freedom, of morals, of firm- 
ness of character, and of manly sentiments. Court favour was the 
end of every effort, and flattery the surest road to arrive at it ; virtue 
and merit met with little acknowledgment. 

§ 403. Louis XIV. wished to enlarge his empire, and to render his 
name illustrious by military renown. He took advantage, therefore, of 
the death of the Spanish king, Philip IV., to make pretensions to his in- 
Spanish War heritance as the husband of his daughter, and to march an 
a.d. 1667, army into the Spanish Netherlands. By the triple alliance 
of England, Holland, and Sweden, he was indeed compelled 
by the peace of Aix, to surrender, after a short campaign, the greater 
part of his conquests ; but many of the frontier towns 
of Flanders remained with France, and were converted 
by Vauban into impregnable fortresses. As Holland had been the 
chief instrument in checking the victorious course of the haughty 
king, so she did not fail to experience the vengeance of the French 
potentate. He won Sweden to his side, purchased the favour of the 
English king by annuities and mistresses (§ 397), and concluded an 
alliance with the elector of Cologne and the bishop of Munster. 
Thus prepared and protected on every side, Louis began a second 
Dutch War war > which at first was directed against Holland alone, 
a.d. 1672— but in which almost all the European states were involved 
1679. during the seven years of its continuance. After the 

u 



O90 TITE MODERN EPOCH. 

celebrated passage of the Bhine at Tolhuis, the French army pursued 
its rapid course of victories into the heart of the States General.. 
Holland was now in extremities. The republicans, who had hitherto 
conducted the affairs of the State with great credit, had been more 
solicitous about improving the navy than upon maintaining or increas- 
ing the land forces, how could they resist the stately armies of France, 
conducted, as they were, by the most celebrated generals ? Liege, 
Utrecht, and Upper Issel, fell into the hands of the enemy ; French 
dragoons already made incursions into the province of Holland, and 
approached to within two miles of the capital, — the terrified republi- 
cans implored peace, but were not listened to. But whilst the French 
army was wasting time in the siege of the Dutch fortresses, the 
republicans, to whom the whole of the mischief was ascribed, were 
overthrown by the Orange party, their chiefs, John and Cornelius de 
Witt, murdered in the streets of the capital, and the government 
then placed in the hands of the shrewd and warlike stadtholder, 
William III. of Orange. This celebrated general aroused the courage 
and patriotic enthusiasm of the Hollanders : they cut through their 
dams, and rendered the inundated country inapproachable by the 
French ; the Avails of Groningen defied all the efforts of the enemy, 
and the marshal of Luxemburg's daring march against Amsterdam, 
over the frozen waters, was frustrated by a sudden thaw. These and 
other circumstances saved Holland. For as the great elector of Bran- 
denburg, Frederick William, now came to the assistance of the Dutch, 
and also induced the emperor Leopold to take an interest in the war, 
the French were obliged to divide their power, and to send their 
chief force to the Bhine. Spain also, and the German 
empire, soon entered into the war against France. 
§ 404. The military power of France increased with the number 
of her enemies. Turenne crossed the Bhine, after having barbarously 
ravaged the lands of the Falatinate, and pressed forwards, burning 
and ravaging, into Franconia. The German princes were divided ; 
the imperial minister of war was in the pay of Louis, and betrayed 
the military plans to the enemy ; the Austrian generals were either 
incompetent, or, like Montecuculi, engaged in Hungary. The triumph 
of France woidd have been complete, had not the great elector saved 
the military reputation of Germany. Louis XIV., for the purpose of 
compelling the latter to separate himself from the army of the Bhine, 
had induced his allies, the Swedes, to attack the march of Branden- 
burg. But the energetic Frederick William appeared in his own 
territories before the enemy entertained the slightest suspicion of his 
approach, and gave the surprised Swedes a complete 
overthrow in the battle of Felirbellin. This battle was 
the foundation of Prussia's greatness. A month later, Turenne, the 
greatest general of his age, was killed by a cannon-ball, near Sasbach, 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 291 

and the enemy compelled to retreat across the Rhine. But the war 
nevertheless continued for three years longer, and was particularly 
destructive to the lands on the Mosel and the Saar, where the French 
committed frightful ravages. It was not until the English parliament 
demanded, with menaces, that the government should dissolve the 
alliance with Trance and support the Dutch, that Louis resolved to 
put an end to the war. By the peace of Nimeguen the 
Dutch, who in the mean time had made the office of 
stadtholder hereditary in the male line of the gallant William of 
Orange, received back the whole of their lost towns and territories. 
On the other hand, the Spaniards were obliged to relinquish Franche- 
Cointe, and the whole of the fortified places in the line of Valenciennes 
and Maubeuge, to France, and the German empire lost not only the 
town of Freiburg in the Breisgau, but was obliged to submit to the 
greatest humiliations. The dukedom of Lorraine, which belonged to 
Germany, and of which the French had taken possession at the com- 
mencement of the war, was given back to the duke, who was engaged 
in the Austrian service, under such degrading conditions, that the 
latter preferred to allow it to remain still in the hands of the enemy ; 
and the great elector saw himself compelled to give up the lands and 
towns he had conquered with so much difficulty in Pomerania to 
the Swedes. 

§ 405. The timorous acquiescence of the German princes inflamed 
the insolence and ambition of Louis XIV. He asserted that a num- 
ber of districts and portions of territory that at an earlier period had 
belonged to the towns and provinces which had fallen to France in 
the Peaces of Westphalia and Nimeguen, were included in the cession. 
To arrange this matter, he established the so-called chambers of 
reunion in Metz and Breisach, and, supported by their decisions, 
took possession of a number of cities, towns, boroughs, villages, mills, 
nay, even whole provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. Success 
only increased the audacity of the French king, so that at length, in 
the midst of peace, he wrested the free town of Strasburg from the 
September, German empire. The traitorous bishop, Francis Egon of 
1681. Furstenburg, assisted in the surprise and occupation of 

the place. The once free burghers were compelled, after being dis- 
armed, to take the oath of subjection to the foreign potentate upon 
their knees. The ornaments of German architecture were restored 
to the Catholic worship, and the arsenal was emptied. Instead of 
chastising this insolence with their united forces, Austria, Spain, and 
August 15, the German empire, concluded a truce for twenty years 
1684. with the tyrannical king, at Regensburg, by which all the 

annexed and plundered provinces were given up to Louis, with the 
single condition, that he should be satisfied with what he had got, and 
should put an end to his reunions. 

v2 



OQ2 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

c. Austria's distress and triumph. 
§ 406. During this time, the emperor Leopold was engaged in the 
eastern portion of his dominions. In Hungary the oppression exer- 
cised by the government upon the Protestants, the burdensome quar- 
tering of troops, and some acts of violence against certain magnates, 
had produced a formidable rebellion at the moment when the Turks 
were renewing their former plans of conquest, and some active chief 
viziers were awakening the warlike spirit of the janisaries. The Aus- 
trian government hoped to suppress the insurrection by severity. It 
condemned the leaders to death upon the scaffold, and outraged the 
chartered rights of the nation. But these acts of violence 
excited the love of freedom and the military spirit of the 
Hungarians. Emmerick Tokeli, an active noble, whose property had 
been confiscated, unfurled the banner of rebellion. In a 
short space he had a considerable army at his command, 
with which he drove the Austrian forces out of Hungary. Louis 
XIV. afforded him assistance, and the Porte, which recog- 
nized him as tributary king of Hungary, dispatched a 
powerful army for his defence. The Turks marched, plundering and 
devastating, to the walls of Vienna. The court fled to Linz, and 
the capital of Austria seemed lost. But the courage of the citizens 
and of their leader, Budiger von Staremberg, together with the Os- 
mans' want of skill in conducting sieges, preserved Vienna for sixty 
days in spite of all attacks, tfll at length the imperial army, com- 
manded by Charles of Lorraine, and in conjunction with a Polish 
force under the heroic king, John Sobieski, came to the help of the 
September, hardly-pressed town. A bloody engagement under the 
1683. walls of Vienna terminated to the disadvantage of the 

Turks. They made a hasty retreat, and left an enormous booty in the 
hands of the victors. Prom this time the fortune of the war remained 
with the Austrians. Hungary was conquered, Tokeli compelled to 
fly, and Buda, which had been in possession of the Turks for 146 
years, was wrested from their hands. After the criminal court of 
Eperies had deprived the Hungarian nobility of their most enter- 
prizing leaders, and spread terror through the whole nation, the 
emperor Leopold was enabled at the Diet at Presburg to abolish 
elective monarchy, and to banish certain privileges from the constitu- 
tion that interfered with the royal power, without any opposition. 
In this way, Hungary became the inheritance of the house of Haps- 
burg. The Turks made great efforts to regain that which had been 
lost, and streams of Turkish and Christian blood were shed around 
the walls of Belgrade ; but those great heroes, Charles of Lorraine, 
prince Eugene, and Louis of Baden, held victory firmly to 
the Austrian banners. By the peace of Carlowitz, Trail- 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 293 

sylvania, and the whole of the land between the Danube and the Theiss 
were ceded to the Austrians, 

d. THE WAR Or ORLEANS. 

§ 407. For the purpose of creating a diversion in favour of the 
Turks against the superior power of Austria, Louis XIV. took ad- 
vantage of affairs relating to the inheritance of the Palatinate and 
War of the election of the archbishop of Cologne, to engage in 

Orleans, a.d. the third war, called the war of Orleans. When the 
elector Charles died without male issue, and the land 
fell into the collateral Catholic line of Pfalz Neuberg, Louis XIV. 
claimed not only the moveable property, but also the immoveable 
estate, as the inheritance of Elizabeth Charlotte, the sister of the 
deceased elector, and the wife of Louis' brother, the duke of Orleans, 
and when this claim was not admitted he marched an army upon the 
Bhine. For the purpose of rendering it impossible for the enemy to 
penetrate into Prance, Louvois, the hard-hearted minister of war, 
gave command for creating a desert between the two kingdoms by 
devastating the banks of the Bhine. Hereupon, the wdd troops fell 
like incendiaries upon the nourishing villages of the Bergstrasse, the 
rich cities on the Bhine, and the blooming districts of the southern 
Palatinate, and reduced them to heaps of ashes. The shattered 
tower of the castle of Heidelberg is yet a silent witness of the bar- 
barity with which Melac and other leaders executed the commands 
of a merciless government. Towns and villages, vineyards and orchards 
were in flames from Haardtgebirge to Nahe ; in Mannheim the in- 
habitants themselves were obliged to assist in destroying their own 
buildings and fortifications ; a great part of Heidelberg was consumed 
by fire, after the bridge of the Neckar had been blown up ; in 
"Worms, the cathedral with many of the dwelling-houses became the 
prey of the flames, and in Spire, the Prench drove out the citizens, 
set fire to the plundered city and the venerable cathedral, 
and desecrated the bones of the ancient emperors. 
The second occasion of the war, in which, beside the German em- 
pire and the emperor, the Netherlands, Spain, and the dukes of Savoy 
and Piedmont became involved, was the appointment to the spiritual 
electorship in Cologne, where Louis XIV., by dint of bribery, had 
secured the election of William von Purstenburg, a man in the in- 
terests of Prance ; but both pope and emperor refused confirmation. 
In this war also, which lasted for eight years, the Prench army, 
which was conducted by the most distinguished generals, maintained 
its supremacy over the far superior force of the enemy. In Italy, in 
the Netherlands, in heavily afflicted Grermany, in the north of Spain, 
the Prench had generally the advantage ; even at sea they maintained 



Og 1< THE MODERN EPOCH. 

tlieir honour, although the battle of La Hogue went 
a.d. 1692. 

against them. It was the cause of much surprise that 

Louis should consent to the universally desired termination of the 

war, and should show himself far more moderate in the 
\. d 1 GO 7 

peace of Byswick (between Hague and Delft) than in 
that of JSTimeguen. The German empire was the only loser, inasmuch 
as it was obliged to leave Strasburg and all the annexed provinces to 
France. Louis' reason for concluding the peace so hastdy was, that 
he wished to have his hands free at the approaching vacancy of the 
Spanish crown. 

6. LIFE AT THE COURT. LITEEATUBE. CHITECH. 

§ 408. It was during the last three decades of the seventeenth 
century that France stood at the culminating point of her power 
abroad and of her prosperity at home, so that the nattering chronicles 
of those days described the age of Louis XIV. as the golden age of 
Prance. Trade and industry received a prodigious development by 
the care of Colbert ; the woollen and silk manufactories, the stocking 
and cloth weaving, which flourished in the southern towns, brought 
prosperity, the maritime force increased, colonies were planted, and 
the productions of France were carried by trading companies to all 
quarters of the globe. 

The court of France displayed a magnificence that had never before 
been witnessed. The palace of Versailles, and the gardens which 
were adorned with statues, fountains, and alleys of trees, were a 
model of taste for all Europe ; fetes of all kinds, jovial parties, ballets, 
fireworks, the opera and the theatre, in the service of which the first 
intellects in France employed their talents, followed upon each other 
in attractive succession ; poets, artists, men of learning, all were eager 
to do honour to a prince who rewarded with a liberal hand every kind 
of talent that conduced either to his amusement or to his glory. 
Sumptuous buildings, as the Hospital of Invalides, costly libraries, 
magnificent productions of the press, vast establishments for the 
natural sciences, academies, and similar institutions, exalted the glory 
and renown of the great Louis. The refined air of society, the 
polished tone, the easy manners of the nobility and courtiers, subdued 
Europe more permanently and extensively than the weapons of the 
army. The French fashions, language, and literature, bore sway 
from this time in all circles of the higher classes. The conse- 
quences of the establishment of the French Academy by Richelieu 
were a development of the language, style, and literary composition, 
that was extremely favourable to the diffusion of the literature. The 
language, so particularly adapted for social intercourse, for conversa- 
tion and for epistolary writing, remained from henceforth the language 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. £95 

of diplomacy, of courts, and of the higher classes ; and although the 
literary productions are wanting in strength, elevation, and nature, the 
polish of the form, and the ease and felicity of the style, gave French 
taste the siipremacy in Europe, and strengthened the French people 
in the agreeable delusion that they were the most civilized of nations. 
In the time of Louis, dramatic poetry reached its highest excellence 
in Peter Corneille (1684), whose " Cid" is regarded as the founda- 
tion and commencement of classical stage poetry ; in J. Racine 
(1699), who, in his Iphigenia and Phsedra ventured to emulate Euri- 
pides, and in the talented writer of comedies, Moliere (1673), whose 
Tartuffe, L'Avare, Le Misanthrope, &c, announce a profound know- 
ledge of human nature in its aberrations. Boileau (Despreaux) 
(1711), a dexterous versifier, was admired as the French Horace on 
account of his odes and satires ; Lafontaine's (1694) fables and stories 
are still familiar in all families as school and children's books, and the 
adventures of Telemachus by Bishop Fenelon (1715) are translated 
into all European languages, and have an incredible circulation. At 
the same time, the eloquence of the pulpit was cultivated by Bossuet 
(1704) and other spiritual orators, the philosophy of scepticism, by 
the Huguenot, Bayle, and the literature of polemics by the religious 
party of the Jansenists, in its contests against the Jesuits and their 
dangerous morality. In this latter class, the Provincial letters of 
Pascal occupy the first rank. 

§ 409. But however flatterers may sing the praises of the age of 
Louis XIV. one spot of shame remains ineradicable — the persecution 
of the Huguenots. The French king believed that the unity of the 
Church was inseparable from a perfect monarchy. For this reason he 
oppressed the Jansenists, a Catholic party, which first contended against 
the Jesuits and afterwards against the head of the Church himself; and 
he compelled the Calvinists, by the most severe persecutions, either 
to fly, or to return into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Colbert, 
who esteemed the Huguenots as active and industrious citizens, pre- 
vented for some time these violent measures ; but the suggestions of 
the royal confessor, La Chaise, the zeal for conversion of the affectedly 
pious Madame Maintenon, who had been first a tutoress of the court, 
and afterwards Louis' trusted wife, and the cruelty of Louvois, the 
minister of war, at length triumphed over the advice of Colbert. A 
long succession of oppressive proceedings against the Huguenots pre- 
pared the way for the great stroke. The number of their churches 
was restricted, and their worship confined to a few of the principal 
towns. Louis' paroxysms of repentance and devotion were always 
the sources of fresh oppressions to the Calvinistic heretics, by whose 
conversion he thought to expiate his own crimes. They were gradu- 
ally excluded from office and dignities ; converts were favoured ; in 
this way, the ambitious were enticed, the poor were won by money, 



£96 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

which flowed from the king's conversion chest, and from the liberal 
gifts of the pious illustrious ; a wide field was opened to the zeal for 
proselytism by the enactment that the conversion of children under 
age was valid. Families were divided, children were torn from their 
parents and brought up as Catholics. Com-t and clergy, the heart- 
less and eloquent bishop Bossuet at their head, set all means in motion 
to establish the ecclesiastical unity of France. "When all other means 
of conversion failed, came the dragonades. At the command of Lou- 
vois, the cavalry took possession of the southern provinces, and es- 
tablished their quarters in the dwellings of the Huguenots. The 
prosperity of the industrious citizens, whose substance was devoured 
by the dragoons, soon disappeared. The bad treatment of these 
booted missionaries, who quitted the houses of the apostates to fall 
in doubled numbers upon those who remained stedfast, operated more 
effectually than all the enticements of the court or the seductions of 
the priests. Thousands fled abroad that they might preserve their 
October, faith upon a foreign soil. At last came the revocation 
1685. f the Edict of Nantes. The religious worship of the 

Calvinists was now forbidden, their churches were torn down, their 
schools closed, their preachers banished from the land ; when the 
emigration increased to a formidable degree, this was forbidden, 
under punishment of the galleys and forfeiture of goods. But despite 
all threats and prohibitions, upwards of 500,000 French Calvinists 
carried their industry, their faith, and their courage to Protestant 
lands. Switzerland, the Palatinate of the Bhine, Brandenburg, 
Holland, and England, offered an asylum to the persecuted. The 
silk manufacture and stocking-weaving were carried abroad by the 
fugitive Huguenots. Flatterers extolled the king as the exterminator 
of heresy, but the courage of the peasants in Cevennes, and the num- 
ber of Huguenots who contented themselves with private devotion, 
show how little religious oppression conduced to the desired end. 
For when the persecution was carried into the distant valleys of the 
Cevennes, where Waldenses and Calvinists lived, according to ancient 
custom, in the simplicity of the faith, the oppressors met with an 
obstinate resistance. Persecution called forth the courage of its 
victims, oppression urged zeal into fanaticism. Led on by a young 
mechanic, the Camisardes, clad in a linen frock, rushed " with naked 
breast against the marshals." A frightful civil war filled the peaceful 
valleys of Cevennes ; fugitive priests, in the gloom of the forest, ex- 
horted the evangelical brethren to a desperate defence, till at length 
the persecutors grew weary. Nearly two millions of the Huguenots 
remained without rights and without religious worship. 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 097 

IV. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

1. THE SPANISH "WAR OF SUCCESSION (1702 — 1714). 

§ 410. "When the childless Charles II., the last of the house of 
Hapsburg in Spain, was near his end, he suffered himself, from a 
feeling of irritation towards the European powers who had arranged a 
partition of his lands during his life, to be persuaded by the Erench 
ambassadors to make a secret will, by which the second grandson of 
Louis XIV., duke Philip of Anjou, was named heir to the whole 
Spanish monarchy, to the exclusion of Austria, which, according to an 
earlier family compact, had the nearest claim upon the vacant throne. 
Charles II. died at the commencement of the new century, 
and Louis XIV. guided by his council and his second 
wife, Madame Maintenon, a woman of inferior birth, determined, 
after some hesitation, to adopt the will, much as his exhausted king- 
dom required repose. This resolution was followed by the most 
Leopold, desperate wars that had hitherto taken place. The em- 
ajj. 1657— peror Leopold took up arms for the purpose of securing 
the inheritance of the Hapsburgs for his second son, 
Charles, by force. On the side of Austria were ranged not only the 
greater part of the princes of Germany, particularly the elector, 
Frederick of Brandenburg, who for this assistance was adorned with 
the title of king of Prussia ; and Hanover, for which a ninth elec- 
torate had recently been made, but the maritime powers, England 
and Holland ; the latter, out of fear of the threatening superiority of 
Erance, the former, from anger that the Erench king had recognized 
the Pretender, James (III.) Stuart, on the death of his father, as 
king of England. The elector of Bavaria and his brother, the elec- 
tor of Cologne, were the only princes that sided with Erance. Spain 
was divided. The eastern provinces, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, 
were for the Austrian claimant of the throne ; Castile, on the other 
hand, and the rest of the kingdom, took up arms to defend the Bour- 
bon king, Philip V., who was descended on his mother's side from 
the Hapsburgs, and whose character bore the impress of Spain. 

§ 411. The reason that the fortune of the war remained this time 
so closely bound to the banners of Austria and England, was, that 
their armies were conducted by the two greatest generals of the age, 
prince Eugene of Savoy, and the duke of Marlborough. The former 
at once increased the renown he had already acquired in the war 
against the Turks, by a masterly campaign in Italy, where he drove 
back the gallant General Catinat and brought over the 
duke of Savoy and Piedmont to the side of Austria ; but 
Marlborough, who was the chief of the "Whigs (§ 397), (who since 
Anne's coming to the government (§ 399) had guided the political 
helm,) and consequently, endowed with almost unlimited power, was 



298 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

distinguished both as a warrior and statesman, but stained his glory 
by avarice and love of gain. The duke of Savoy brought the calami- 
ties of war upon his own land by his alliance with Austria. Vendome, 
a skilful general, subdued Piedmont and the fertde plains of Lombardy, 
and thought to have united himself with the elector of Bavaria who 
bad marched into the Tyrol ; but the daring rise of the gallant Tyro- 
lese, who, from their inaccessible mountain heights and the 

AD 1 70S 

crevices of their valleys, attacked the Bavarians with their 
rifles, and prevented their advance by a well-managed guerilla warfare, 
prevented this plan. Tbe elector was compelled, after severe loss, to 
evacuate the Tyrol ; whereupon he joined the French army, which 
had marched through the Kinzigthal in Swabia, under the command 
of the marshals Villars and Tallard. It was here that Eugene, and 
Louis of Baden, the commander of the imperial forces, opposed them- 
selves to the enemy. Marlborough, after a masterly march on the 
Bhine and the Mosel, soon joined the other two, upon which, Eugene 
and Marlborough dispatched the old and cautious Louis to the siege 
of Ingoldstadt, and then defeated the French and Bavarian army at 
August 13, the battle of Hochstadt (or, as the Enghsh call it, the 
!704. battle of Blenheim). Tallard, and a great part of his 

force, were made prisoners ; the whole of the munitions of war fell 
into the hands of the enemy. The elector of Bavaria was obliged to 
follow the French over the Bhine, and expose his territories to the 
Austrians, who exercised the most frightful oppression there ; so that 
at length the people, driven to despair, made an insurrection, which, 
however, had only the effect of increasing the measure of their suffer- 
ings. Eor the purpose of chastising the unpatriotic sentiments of the 
Joseph I., princely house of Bavaria, the new emperor, Joseph I., who 
a.d. 1705— trod the same path his father had done, pronounced the 
ban against Max Emanuel, and his brother, the elector of 
Cologne. 

§ 412. Fortune was also adverse to the French both in the 
May 23, Netherlands and in Italy. In the former country, Marl- 

17O6. borough gained the splendid victory of Bamillies from the 

incompetent marshal Villeroi, the favourite of Madame Maintenon ; 
upon which, the Spanish Netherlands acknowledged the Austrian 
September 7, competitor for the throne : and in Italy, prince Eugene 
1706'. defeated the superior force of the French at Turin ; where- 

upon, Milan and Lombardy, together Avith Lower Italy and Sicily, fell 
into the hands of the victors. The glory of Eugene spread far and 
vide, and his name became henceforth familiar in the mouths of the 
people, who celebrated his deeds in their songs. It was in Spain only 
that Philip of Anjou maintained himself against the English and Aus- 
trian army. It is true, that the provinces of the ancient kingdom of 
Aragon, out of national hatred to Castde, sided, for the most part, 



AGE OF LOUIS XIV. g9Q 

with the Austrian claimant of the throne, when the latter landed in 
Catalonia. Barcelona, A r alencia, and all the cities of hnportance 
united themselves to him, whilst the English fleet took 
Gibraltar. Philip V. nevertheless maintained his supre- 
macy by the adherence of the Castilians, and visited the revolted pro- 
vinces with a severe chastisement after the victory of Almanza. The 
April 25, beautiful plains of Valencia were ravaged, the resolute 
1707- inhabitants who were prepared to undergo the worst 

extremities rather than submit themselves to the detested Castilians, 
suffered death in all its forms ; and, to avoid the insults of their ene- 
mies, they even set fire to their own houses, and perished, like the 
citizens of Saguntum and Numantia, beneath the ruins. When at 
length resistance was broken by the capture of Saragossa and Lerida, 
and the heads of the boldest had fallen beneath the axe of the execu- 
tioner, the three provinces of Valencia, Catalonia, and Aragon lost 
the last remains of then rights, and were governed henceforth by the 
laws of Castile. Barcelona, however, maintained a gallant resistance 
to the end of the war. 

§ 413. In the year 1708, the two great generals, Eugene and 
Marlborough, increased their military renown by the victory of Oude- 
July 11, narde on the Scheld. At this point Louis XIV. began to 
1708. despair of the successful termination of the war ; and, 

taking the exhausted condition of his kingdom into consideration, he 
now wished for peace. But, by the influence of Eugene and Marl- 
borough, who wished to take advantage of their success for the hu- 
miliation of Erance, conditions of great severity- were demanded of 
him. It was not only required that the Erench king should renounce 
all pretensions to the collective empire of Spain, but that he should 
surrender Alsace and Strasburg ; and hard as this abasement must 
have appeared to the proud potentate, he would have accepted the 
conditions, had not his enemies added the degrading demand, that 
Louis should himself assist in driving his own grandson out of Spain. 
This appeared too severe to the Erench court, and the war continued. 
September But in the murderous battle of Malplaquet, Erance lost 
11, 1709. more troops than in any previous engagement, and would 
have been compelled to accept peace under any conditions, had not 
Divine Providence now wished to chastise the insolence of others, 
that men might learn moderation. 

§ 414. A quarrel between the proud and ambitious wife of Marl- 
borough and queen Anne, and the intrigues that sprung from it, had 
occasioned the exclusion of the duchess from the court, and the ex- 
pulsion of the Whig ministry by the Tories. The latter, with the 
celebrated statesman and writer Bolingbroke at their head, now 
wished for the termination of the war, in order that Marlborough, who 
was at the head of the opposite party, might be no longer indispen- 



300 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

sable ; and ■with this object, entered into negotiations for peace -with 
France, which were brought to a more rapid termination 

A.D. lylO. 

by the death of the emperor Joseph I. without male heirs, 
in the following year, and by the succession of his brother, Charles, 
who was the intended inheritor of the Spanish monarchy. It could 
Charles VI. now De B0 longer the interest of the foreign powers to 
a.d. 1711 — add the territories of Spain to those of Austria, and thus 
to establish the supremacy of the house of Hapsburg in 
Europe. A truce between England and Spain, after the conclusion 
of which Marlborough lost all his offices, and was accused in parlia- 
May 11, ment of embezzlement, was the forerunner of the peace of 

^IS- Utrecht. By this, the Spanish and American possessions 

were left to the Bourbon king, Philip V., under the condition, that 
the crowns of France and Spain were never to be united ; England 
received Nova Scotia and other possessions in North America from 
France ; and Gibraltar, and certain commercial advantages from 
Spain ; the duke of Savoy received the island of Sardinia and the title 
of king. 

The emperor and the German empire did not join in the peace of 
Utrecht, and continued the war for some time longer. But the em- 
peror quickly became convinced that he was unequal to conduct the 
war by himself for any lengthened period, and gave his consent to 
the peace of Rastadt, to which also the German empire 
1714. acceded at Baden in the Aargau. By this, Austria ob- 

September, tained the Spanish Netherlands, and Milan, Naples, and 
1714. Sicily, in Italy ; the electors of Bavaria and Cologne were 

a^ain restored to their lands and titles, and the royalty of Prussia 
generally acknowledged. 

September 1 § 415- France. — Louis XIV. died in the following 
1714. year, weary of life, and borne down by severe strokes of 

fate. Within two years he had lost his son, his grandson, and his 
intellectual wife, and his eldest great-grandchild, so that his youngest 
Louis XV., great-grandchild, then five years of age, succeeded to the 

a.d. 1715— throne, under the title of Louis XV. During his minority 

1774 • • 

the government was conducted by duke Philip of Orleans. 

Regent,' a.d. This prince, like his former preceptor, cardinal Dubois, 
1715—1723. w hoin he raised to the ministry, Avas a man of intellect and 
talent, but of most profligate morals, who despised religion and virtue, 
and by his dissolute and voluptuous life outraged decency and morality, 
and squandered the revenues of the state. The bank, which was esta- 
blished by the Scotchman, Law, and which not only promised a high 
rate of interest, but held out hopes of vast profits in America, pro- 
duced an incredible intoxication of mind throughout all France, which 
the unprincipled regent and his companion well knew how to take 
advantage of. Almost all the gold coin flowed into the bank, and was 



SPAIN. ENGLAND. 301 

exchanged for paper money, till at length a bankruptcy took place, 
which deprived thousands of their property, whilst the greedy mag- 
nates were enriched by the spofls. 

§ 416. Spain. — The Spanish king, Philip V., was a weak prince, 
who was governed by women, and who at length fell entirely into 
melancholy, and surrendered the government of his empire to his am- 
bitious second wife, Elizabeth of Parma, and the intriguing Italian, 
Alberoni. These two contrived, by dint of war and intrigue, that 
Elizabeth's eldest son, Charles, should receive the kingdom of Naples 
and Sicdy ; and her second son, Philip, the dukedom of Parma, with 
Piacenza and Gruastalla. In this Avay, these states received Bourbon 
Ferdinand rulers. "When Phdip Y. sunk, full of trouble, into the 
VI., a.d. grave, he was succeeded by his son, Eerdinand VI., who 
1740—1759. inherited his father's hypochondria, and at length sunk 
into an incurable melancholy, which, like that of Saul, could only be 
relieved by singing and playing on the harp ; hence the singer Eari- 
nelli obtained great influence at the court. 

§ 417. England. — The free constitution of England obtained such 
George I. stability during the reigns of the kings of the house of 
a.d. 1714— Hanover, George I., II., III., that the personal character 
'"'' of the monarch exercised but little influence upon the 

course of events. The government, which was responsible to parlia- 
George II., ment, had more regard to the prosperity of the kingdom 
r™' ^ 2 ^ an( ^" ^° ^ ie g rea ^ ness °f the nation, than to the wishes of 
' the court. It was for this reason that trade, industry, 

a.d. 1760— navigation, and prosperity, received an immense develop- 
1820. ment. Under George I., who restored the Whigs to bis 

a.d. 1715-17- confidence, James (III.) Stuart attempted, with the aid 
of the discontented Tories (Jacobites), to regain the English throne ; 
but his undertaking failed, and involved his adherents in heavy penal- 
ties. The same thing took place in a second attempt, which was 
hazarded by James's son, Charles Edward, in the reign of George II. 
Aided by Erance, he landed in Scotland, where he found 
ugu ' ' numerous adherents among the gallant Highlanders. His 
first successes encouraged him to march upon England. But fortune 
soon forsook him. The battle of Culloden destroyed the 
' hopes of the Stuarts for ever. Charles Edward, upon 
whose head the English government had set a price, was saved, as 
once Charles II. had been, by the friends and adherents of his house, 
in a wonderful and romantic manner. His abettors were proceeded 
against with frightful severity ; there was no end to executions and 
confiscations of property ; the prisons were filled with Jacobites from 
Edinburgh to London. 



302 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

2. CHARLES XII. 01? SWEDEN AND PETER THE GREAT OE RUSSIA 
IK THE NORTHERN WAR (1700 — 1718). 

§ 418. Sweden and Russia. — At the commencement of the 

eighteenth century, Sweden stood at the highest point of her power. 

The possessions of the crown had been increased, and the treasury 

filled, by the prudence and frugality of Charles XI. ; the fleet and 

army were in good condition ; the coast lands of the Baltic, with the 

rich towns of Wismar, Stralsund, Stettin, Riga, and Reval ; and the 

effluxes of the "Weser, Oder, Dwina, and Neva, were included in the 

Swedish territory, and the site now occupied by St. Petersburg was a 

swampy hollow on Swedish land. In courage and military spirit the 

Swedes Avere inferior to none. But a powerful neighbour 
Imperial . . . x . ° . _ 

house of Ro- had arisen in the East since the Russians had united 

manof, a.d. anc l strengthened themselves under the rule of the house 

1613 1730 , 

of Romanof, and now began to extend his frontiers in 

every direction. This Avas especially the case under Alexei Romanof 
Alexei, a.d. an d his two sons, Peodor and Peter. Alexei conquered 
1645— 1G76. Smolensk and Severia, compelled the warlike and well- 
mounted Cossacks to acknowledge the supremacy of Russia, and 
encouraged the civilization and industry of the country ; but it was 
Feodor, a.d. Peodor who established the absolute power of the Tzars, by 
1676 — 1682. destroying the genealogical registers upon which the 
noble families founded their pretensions. 

§ 419. Peter the Great. — Peter the Great perfected that which 
Peter the ^ s predecessors had commenced. By his extensive tra- 
Great, a.d. vels through the countries of Europe, he made himself 
1725. aC q ua i n ted with the customs of civilized nations, and with 
the advantages of a regular government ; by this means he obtained 
a love for civilization, and directed the whole of his efforts to convert 
Russia from an Asiatic state, which it had hitherto been, into an 
European one. With this object, he encouraged the immigration of 
foreign artizans, mariners, and officers into Russia, without regard to 
the hatred to foreigners entertained by his countrymen ; that he 
might himself be able to share their labours, he made himself ac- 
quainted with the art of ship-building in Holland and England, and 
inspected the workshops of artists and of the artizans of mills, dams, 
machinery, &c. An insurrection of the Strelitzes, produced by the 
exasperation occasioned by these innovations, was suppressed, and 
taken advantage of by the emperor for reforming the affairs of the 
army upon the European model. By the frightful punishments in- 
flicted upon the gudty, the hangings, headings, and breakings upon 
the wheel, which lasted for weeks, and in which the Tzar himself 
took a share, Peter showed that civilization had not penetrated his 
own heart. Despite all his efforts to introduce European refinement 



CHARLES XII. PETER THE GREAT. 303 

into his dominions, and despite his European dress, which he com- 
manded to be worn by all his subjects, in manners, in mind, and in 
his mode of governing, he remained a barbarian, devoted to brandy, 
coarse in his desires, and frantic in his wrath. 

§ 420. Poland under Frederick Augustus the Strong. — • 
Whilst Russia was raising and confirming her power, Poland, by her 
wild and ungoverned freedom, was progressing towards her downfall. 
After the death of the military king, John Sobieski, a 
furious contest arose respecting the election of another 
sovereign, from which Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, a prince 
distinguished for his bodily strength, as well as for gallantry and love 
of magnificence, at length came forth victorious. He was 
called to the throne of Poland, after having previously 
gone over to the Roman Catholic Church. But the Polish nobility, 
who alone were in possession of any political rights, whilst the pea- 
sants pined in serfdom, and the citizens were unable to raise them- 
selves from their subordinate position, had already so contracted the 
royal power, that the state had acquired the form of an aristocratic 
republic, in which the elected chief was little more than the executor 
of the resolutions of the Diet. 

§ 421. "When Charles XII. ascended the throne at the age of 
Charles XII sateen years, the rulers of Russia, Poland, and Den- 
a.d. 1697 — mark, thought the time was arrived for depriving Sweden 
1718. of the lands she had conquered. The Russian tzar, Peter 

the Great, wished to obtain a firm footing on the shores of the Baltic ; 
the elective king of Poland, Prederick Augustus the Strong, elector 
of Saxony, endeavoured to get possession of Livonia, and the Danish 
king, Prederick IV., attempted to wrest Schleswic from the duke of 
BZolstein-Gottorp, a brother-in-law of Charles XII. They accordingly 
concluded an alliance by the mediation of the Livonian, Patkul, after 
which, Prederick Augustus marched with a Saxon army to the fron- 
tiers of Livonia, and threatened Riga ; whilst the Russians attacked 
Esthonia and besieged Narva ; and the Danish king waged war with 
the duke of Holstein-Grottorp. But to the astonishment of Europe 
the young king of Sweden, who had hitherto been looked upon as 
obtuse and of weak intellects, suddenly displayed a lively and ener- 
getic spirit and distinguished military talents. Enraged at the un- 
principled attempts of his enemies, he rapidly crossed over to the 
island of Zealand with his gallant army, commenced at 
once the siege of Copenhagen, and spread such terror 
among the Danes, that Prederick IV. renounced the alliance against 
the Swedes, in the peace of Travendal, and promised to indemnify 
the duke of BZolstein. Hereupon, Charles directed his arms against 
his other opponents. On the 30th of November, with 
8000 Swedes, he defeated a force of the Russians of ten 



301 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

times that number, before Narva, and captured a number of cannon 
and a large quantity of ammunition. He then marched across Li- 
vonia and Courland into Poland, repeatedly defeated the united 
armies of Saxony and Poland, and took one town after the other. 

_ M The trembling citizens of Warsaw surrendered him the 
a.d. 1702. . . 

keys of their capital, and paid the military levies imposed 

upon them ; Cracow fell into his hands, and the fertile plains of the 

Vistula, with Thorn, Elbing, and Dantzic were soon in the power of 

the Swedes. Charles now demanded of the Poles that they should 

depose their king, Frederick Augustus, and undertake a 

AD 1 70^ 

new election ; and despite the resistance of the nobility, 
the Swedish king, supported by the Polish party spirit, compelled the 
required deposition, and obtained the election of Stanislaus Lescinski, 
voiwode of Posen, a creature of his own, in an elective 
assembly which was surrounded by Swedish soldiers. 
§ 422. After a few difficult campaigns in the southern provinces of 
Poland, where the Swedish king, despite the boggy soil and the 
poverty of the country, drove back the superior foi*ces of the enemy, 
Charles determined upon seeking his opponent, Frederick Augustus, 
in his own territories. Without asking permission of the emperor he 
marched across Silesia into Lusatia, and was soon in the heart of 
Saxony, which, notwithstanding the severe military discipline of 
Charles, was dreadfully mishandled by the hostile force. The inhabit- 
ants of the plains fled into the towns, the royal family sought refuge 
in the neighbouring state. Augustus, for the sake of saving his land, 
gave his consent to the disgraceful peace of Altranstadt, by which he 
September 24, was engaged to renounce the crown of Poland for hhnself 
1706. and his posterity, to dissolve his alliance with the tzar, 

and to give up the Livonian, Patkul, to the king of Sweden, who put 
him to a cruel death upon the wheel. Nevertheless, the hostfle army 
still remained for a whole year in Saxony, to the great detriment of 
the country, which suffered from the extravagance of the court of 
Dresden, as well as by the quartering of troops and military levies. 
Whilst the estates consented with sighs to the heavy taxes, and the 
impoverished peasant was almost starving, the elector gave one mag- 
nificent court banquet after the other, and squandered enormous 
sums upon his country-seats. What did not the entertainment and 
support of the mistresses and illegitimate children of the gallant 
prince cost ! 

Charles XII. was a remarkable contrast to this luxurious and 
frivolous prince. He possessed the nature of a perfect soldier ; 
his temperance was so great that he refrained from all spiri- 
tuous liquors, and whilst in the field, contented himself with the 
slender rations of the army ; he wore the same plain dress both in 
summer and winter — a long soldier's frock, with brass buttons, and 



CHARLES XII. PETER THE GREAT. 305 

large horseman's boots ; during a march or in battle, he subjected 
himself to the greatest toils, privations, and dangers ; he avoided the 
company of women; the only thing that possessed any charms for 
him was the military life and its dangers ; the noise of battle, the 
whistling of balls, the neigh of the war-horse, were more congenial to 
him than operas, court-banquets, and concerts. 

§ 423. Whilst Charles XII. was lingering in Poland and Saxony, 
Peter the Great was making preparations for subjecting the posses- 
sions of Sweden on the Baltic, and adding them to his own dominions. 
He built the fortresses of Schliisselburg and Kronstadt, had the 
swampy hollows of the Neva drained by serfs after unspeakable ex- 
_ ertions, and laid the foundation of the new residence, St. 

Petersburg. Nobles, merchants, artisans and their fami- 
lies, from Moscow and other cities, were compelled to settle there, 
and foreigners were encouraged to emigrate thither. Had Charles 
XII., when he at length left Saxony to turn his arms against the last 
and greatest of his foes, chosen the lands of the Baltic for the scene 
of his military operations, Peter's new plans and creations might 
easily have been destroyed ; but fortunately for him, Charles decided 
to march upon Moscow, and to penetrate into the heart 
of the Russian dominions. He captured Grodno and 
Wilno, crossed the Beresina in June, and pursued his course towards 
Smolensk. No Russian army opposed the fool-hardy king, who, at 
the head of his gallant forces, waded through streams and marched 
across pathless morasses. But now came the turning point in the 
life of Charles. Instead of waiting for his general, Lowenhaupt, who 
was on his way to join him with fresh troops, and with clothing and 
provisions for the exhausted army, he suffered himself to be persuaded 
by the old Cossack chief, Mazeppa, to undertake a toilsome march 
in the woody and desert Ukraine. Lowenhaupt, attacked by a su- 
perior force of Russians, despite his distinguished military talents, 
was obliged to sacrifice the whole of his artillery, his baggage, and his 
provisions, to enable himself, with a small host, to reach the king, 
who was restlessly hastening forward. The autumnal 
rains were followed by an unusually severe winter, in the 
course of which, many hardy warriors perished of cold, and the hands 
and feet of thousands became frost-bitten. At length Charles advanced 
to the siege of the strong city of Pultowa, which, however, was pro- 
tracted by the want of artillery till Peter himself approached with a 
vast army. The battle of Pultowa, which terminated in 
u y ' ' the total defeat of the Swedish army, was now fought ; all 
the baggage and the rich military chest fell into the hands of the 
enemy, and the surviving officers and soldiers were made prisoners. 
Charles XII., the once proud conqueror of three kings, was now a 
helpless fugitive, who by his utmost exertions barely succeeded in 

x 



30G THE MODERN EPOCH. 

saving himself with about 2000 followers, in a foodless and shelter- 
less desert in the dominions of Turkey. Lowenhaupt collected the 
remainder of the fugitives, hut as retreat was impossible from the 
want of provisions and artillery, he was obliged to surrender himself 
with 16,000 men. Not one of these brave warriors ever revisited 
his home ; they were dispersed over the vast empire, and some died 
in the mines of Siberia, others as beggars on the highways. Thus 
perished this heroic band, as admirable in their endurance as in their 
triumphs. 

§ 424. Charles XII. was honourably received and generously treated 
by the Turks. In his camp before Bender, he lived in royal fashion 
as the guest of the sultan. But the thought of returning 
as a vanquished man, without an army, to his kingdom was 
unendurable to his haughty soul. He wished to persuade the Turks 
to a war with Russia, and then to march at their head through the 
territories of his enemy. Whilst he was wasting his time and ener- 
gies at Bender in furtherance of this project, and employing every 
means to gain over the Turks to his plans, his three opponents 
renewed their former alliance ; iipon which, Frederick Augustus again 
made himself master of the throne of Poland, the tzar Peter extended 
his conquests to the Baltic, and the king of Denmark again took 
possession of Schleswic. Prussia and Hanover, also, soon united 
themselves and seized irpon the Swedish possessions in Germany. At 
length, the plans of Charles seemed about to succeed. A Turkish 
army marched into Moldavia, and reduced the tzar to so critical a 
position on the Pruth, that he and his whole army were 
'in great danger of becoming prisoners of war. But 
Peter's wife, Catherine, who, from a slave of the Russian minister, 
Menzikoff, had become empress of all the Russias, found means to 
corrupt the Turkish army, and to bring about the conclusion of a 
peace. Charles XII. foamed with rage at finding the end he thought 
so near now farther removed than ever. He however still adhered to 
his purpose, and even remained at Bender after the Porte had with- 
drawn its hospitality, discontinued the supplies of money it had 
hitherto furnished, and commanded him to quit the Turkish territory. 
He allowed the Porte to supply money for Ins journey and neverthe- 
less remained. At length the janisaries stormed his camp, set fire to 
the house in which he defended himself like a Hon, and took him 
prisoner as he made a furious sally. But he still remained ten 
months longer in captivity in Turkey, and wasted his strength in 
childish obstinacy. Was it to be wondered that people at length 
began to look upon him as deranged ? It was not untd news was 
brought him that his possessions in Germany, as far as Stralsund, 
were in the hands of the enemy, that lie suddenly quitted Turkey, 
after a residence of five years, and arrived unexpectedly before the 



CHARLES XII. PETER THE GREAT. 307 

October, gates of Stralsund, after a journey of fourteen days, per- 
1711. formed on horseback without the slightest interruption. 

§ 425. Stralsund was defended by dint of the greatest exertions 
December, f° r upwards of a year by the brave Swedes ; at length the 
1715. c ity was compelled to yield, whereupon Pomerania, with 

the island of Eugen, fell into the hands of the Prussians. But still 
the obstinate king would not listen to a peace. By the advice of the 
intriguing Baron von Grdrz, he caused paper money to be prepared to 
defray the expenses of his new preparations for war, and 
without awaiting the result of the negotiations that Gorz 
had entered into with the Eussian emperor, he fell upon Norway with 
two divisions of his army, for the purpose of chastising the king of 
Denmark for his breach of the peace. It was here that Charles met 
with his death before the fortress of Friedrichshall, which he was 
besieging in the midst of winter. As he was leaning at night 
upon a breastwork, inspecting the operations in the trenches, he was 
killed by a bullet, which came, apparently, from the hand of an 
assassin. The Swedish nobility now assumed all the power to them- 
December 11, selves, excluded the rightful heir to the throne (Frederick 
!718. of Holstein-G-ottorp) from the government, and presented 

it, under great restrictions, to Charles's younger sister, Ulrica Eleo- 
nora, and her husband, Frederick of Hesse-Cassel. From this time 
forth, Sweden was a monarchy in nothing but name ; the power was 
all in the hands of a senate of nobles. The barbarous execution of the 
count Gorz, and the hasty conclusion of a succession of 
treaties of peace, by which Sweden, in return for an indem- 
nification in money, gave up all her foreign possessions, 
with the exception of a small portion of Pomerania, was 
the commencement of the government of a selfish aristocracy, who 
cared nothing for the honour or well-being of the country. 

§ 426. Whilst Sweden, broken and exhausted, was thus escaping 
from the contest, Eussia was rishig into European importance. The 
acquisition of the Swedish provinces of Ingria, Esthonia, and Livonia, 
to which Comiand was also added a few decades later, was the com- 
mencement of a new epoch for Eussia. As long as Moscow had 
remained the capital city, the views of the tzars had been directed 
towards Asia, to the inhabitants and customs of which the Eussians 
were more assimilated than to those of Europe ; but since Petersburg, 
which lay nearer to the civilization of the west, had become the seat 
of the government, and risen into importance by the magnificence of 
its plan and of its buildings, Eussia had become a European empire. 

The restless activity of the great emperor produced a total revolu- 
tion. Trade and navigation were encouraged by the formation of 
roads, canals, and harbours ; internal industry, trades, manufactories, 
and mining met with special encouragement ; and even learning and a 

x2 



30S THE MODERN EPOCH. 

higher grade of refinement were provided for by the foundation of an 
academy of sciences. The government and police were also remodelled 
upon the pattern of other free states, so that the power of the 
emperor was increased and that of the nobles (Boyards) diminished. 
One of the innovations of Peter the Great which was followed by the 
most important consequences, was the abolition of the dignity of 
Patriarch, and the creation of the sacred synod as the chief ecclesi- 
astical court, to which the emperor communicated his orders. 

§ 427. "Whilst Peter was thus reforming his kingdom, he saw, with 
grief, that his only son, Alexei, was disinclined to the alterations, 
restricted his intercourse entirely to the friends of the old system, 
and cherished the intention of again removing his residence to Mos- 
cow. It was in vain that the emperor attempted to bend the stub- 
born and defiant spirit of his son, and to make him a friend to Euro- 
pean civilization ; Alexei retained his opinions, and at length disap- 
peared from the kingdom. Upon this, Peter, anxious for the per- 
manence of his institutions, ordered his son to be arrested, brought 

home as a prisoner, and condemned to death. Whether 
a d 1722 

Alexei was put to death, or whether he died before the 

execution of the sentence, is disputed. An Ukase declared the ap- 
pointment of a successor to the throne to be dependent upon the 
Catherine I. wu l °f the reigning emperor. After Peter's death, his 
a.d. 1725— w ife, Catherine I., succeeded him in the government. 
Under her and her successor, Peter II., Menzikoff, who 
a.d 1727— had risen from the lowest condition to be the favourite 
1730. of the emperor and an all-powerful minister, exercised 

the greatest influence upon the government. But he was overthrown 
at the moment when he imagined that he was about to marry his 
daughter to the young emperor, and ended his days in exile in Siberia. 
Anna, a.d. Anna, the successor of Peter II., reposed her confidence 
1730—1740. m two energetic Germans, Ostermann and Munnich, of 
whom the former was at the head of the cabinet, the latter conducted 
and arranged the affairs of the army. But these, as well as Anna's 
favourite, Biron, who was to have managed the government after her 
Elizabeth, death, were banished to Siberia, when Elizabeth, the 
a.d. 1741— youngest daughter of Peter the Great, was raised to the 
throne by a revolution in the palace. Ivan, a child one 
year old, whom Anna had named her successor, was thrown into 
prison, where he grew up like a brute without the slightest education. 
Elizabeth gave herself up to a voluptuous and profligate life, and 
relinquished the government to her favourites. 

§ 428. Under Frederick Augustus II., the love of magnificence, 
the luxury and debauchery that prevailed in Dresden, penetrated into 
Poland, and destroyed the remaining moral power of the nobles. New 
\ ices were associated to the old ones, and proved the more pernicious, 



RISE OF PRUSSIA. 309 

inasmuch as the Polish nobility possessed merely the outward polish 
of European civilization, and that inward barbarism and sensual ex- 
citability were united with refinement. Frivolity, arrogance, and religi- 
ous intolerance were now more prevalent in Poland than ever. The 

Jesuits succeeded in depriving the Polish Dissidents of 
their civil and religious privileges by an extraordinary Diet, 
and when the general hatred broke forth in a popular insurrection hi the 
Protestant town of Thorn against the Jesuitical colleges, the burgo- 
master was put to death and the town severely punished. After the 
death of Frederick Augustus II. arose the Polish war of succession. 

Stanislaus Lescinski (who, flying from Poland after the 
a.d. 1733. battle f p u itowa, § 423, had wandered in poverty about 
Alsacia, till he was dehvered from want by the marriage of his daugh- 
ter with Louis XV.) again made claims to the crown, and, trusting to 
aid from Prance, travelled in disguise to "Warsaw. But Russia and 
Austria supported the claim of Frederick Augustus III. of Saxony. 
F , . , Stanislaus, although acknowledged by the majority of the 

Augustus, a.d. Polish nation, was obliged to yield the field to his opponent 
1733—1703. w h en the Russian army, under the conduct of Mlinnich, 
marched into Poland. He fled in the dress of a peasant to Konigsburg, 

and from thence to France. After some time, however, 

a peace was concluded which was extremely favourable 
both to France and Stanislaus. "When the house of Medici was 

nearly extinct in Florence, the emperor Charles VI. 

wished his son-in-law, Francis Stephen, to exchange his 
hereditary dukedom of Lorraine for Tuscany, so that the former 
might devolve upon Stanislaus, and, after his death, upon France. 
Charles VI. made this sacrifice to secure the accession of the French 
king to the Pragmatic Sanction (§ 432). Stanislaus Lescinski lived 
for twenty-nine years after this in Nancy, a benefactor of the poor, 
and a patron of the arts and sciences. But Poland, under the govern- 
ment of the weak and indolent Frederick Augustus III. was approach- 
ing every day nearer to its dissolution. 

3. RISE OF PEUSSIA. 

Frederick § 429, Frederick William, the great elector of Bran- 

William, a.d. denburg, enlarged his territories on the east and west by 
1640—1688. guccess f u i warSj an a secured the lofty position of his 
state by the formation of a considerable army ; he, at the same time, 
encouraged the internal prosperity and civilization of his dominions, 
by giving efficient aid to industry and the arts of peace, and by 
favouring immigration from civilized foreign countries, especially that 
of the French Huguenots, into his own states. After this energetic 
and sagacious prince followed his splendour-loving son, elector 



310 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

Frederick III. Frederick HI., to whom the outward magnificence with 
as king. which Louis XIV. had surrounded the court of Ver- 

Frederick I., saillcs appeared the greatest triumph of earthly majesty. 
1713 . ~~ -^ e accor dhigly attached the highest importance to a 
splendid court and magnificent feasts. He looked with 
envy upon the electors of Hanover and Saxony, who had obtained 
that, which, in his eyes, was the most inestimable of possessions — a 
royal crown, the former in England (§ 399), the latter in Poland 
(§ 420) ; and great was his joy Avhen the emperor Leopold showed him- 
self disposed to confer upon him the title of king of Prussia, in return 
for his assurances of vigorous support in the Spanish war 
of succession. After a solemn coronation in Konigsburg, 
in which the elector placed the crown upon his own head and upon 
that of his wife, and after a succession of splendid banquets, the 
new king, Frederick I., held a magnificent entry into Berlin, which 
he attempted to render a suitable residence for royalty, by public 
buildings, pleasure grounds, and monuments of art. The arts and 
sciences were encouraged. In the country seat of Charlottenberg, 
where the highly accomplished queen Sophia Charlotte held her gra- 
cious rule, there was always an assemblage of distinguished and intel- 
lectual people. Societies for the cidtivation of the arts and sciences 
were established in Berlin under the auspices of the great philosopher 
Leibnitz ; a flourishing university arose in Halle, distinguished by a 
noble freedom of spirit, and became the scene of the labours of such 
men as Christopher Thomasius, the powerful advocate of reason, and 
of the G-erman language and mode of thinking, the pious Hermann 
Franke, the founder of the orphan asylum, that " trophy of trust in 
Cod and love to men," and the philosopher, Christopher Wolf. 

§ 430. This expenditure, combined with the support of a consider- 
able army in the sendee of the emperor, pressed hard upon the im- 
poverished land ; the citizen and peasant class were oppressed with 
heavy taxes ; the new splendour of the royal house appeared to be full 
of evil for the country ; fortunately, the extravagant Frederick I. was 
F d ' kWil succee ded by the frugal Frederick William I., who was 
liam I., a.d. in every thing the counterpart of his predecessor. The 
1713 -1740. j ewe i s an( j costly furniture that had been collected by the 
father were sold by the son, who paid the debts with the proceeds ; 
every thing in the shape of luxury was banished from the court, the 
attendants were reduced to those that were absolutely necessary, and 
every superfluous expense avoided. The king and his court lived 
like citizens, the meals consisted of household fare, and the queen 
and her daughter were obliged to occupy themselves in domestic 
duties. The clothing and furniture were simple. The smoking-club, 
in which Frederick William and his "good friends" practised coarse 



RISE OF PRUSSIA. 311 

jests at the expense of the simple or good-natured, and where every 
one was obliged to have a pipe in his mouth, usurped the place of the 
intellectual circle with which Frederick I. and his wife had surrounded 
themselves ; the opera-singers and actors were discharged ; French 
beaux esprits, as well as teachers of languages and dancing, were 
banished ; poets, artists, and men of learning were deprived of their 
pensions in part or entirely ; Wolf, whose philosophy was offensive to 
the orthodox and pious, received notice to quit Halle within twenty- 
four hours, "under penalty of the rope." But offensive as this 
severity and coarseness on the part of the king might be, as well as 
his contempt for all cvdtivation, learning, and refinement, it must ' 
nevertheless be confessed that his powerful nature, his sound judg- 
ment, and his sparing housekeeping gave strength and firmness to 
the young state. He relieved the peasants for the purpose of raising 
agriculture ; he encouraged internal industry, and forbade the impor- 
tance of foreign manufactures ; he settled the Protestants who had 
been driven from their houses by the bishop of Salsburg in his own 
dominions ; and although his severity was occasionally exercised at 
the expense of personal freedom, it also compelled judges and officials 
to an efficient performance of their duties. The king's own example 
affords a proof of how much may be effected by frugality and good 
management ; for although he spent enormous sums upon his Potsdam 
guards, for which he had "long fellows" enlisted or kidnapped from 
all the countries of Europe, and although he called many xiseful insti- 
tutions into existence, he left, at his death, a sum of money amount- 
ing to 8,000,000 thalers, a great treasure in silver plate, a regulated 
revenue, and a large and admirably organized and disciplined army. 

§ 431. His great son, Frederick II. pursued a different path ; 
whilst his father was engaged in his wild hunting parties or pursuing 
Bom January bis coarse amusements with his companions, the talented 
24, 1712. an d. intellectual prince was busied with the writers of 
France, and with his flute, which he passionately loved. The differ- 
ence of their dispositions rendered them strangers to each other. 
Frederick was offended by his father's harshness, and the latter was 
angry witli his son for pursuing a different course, and would willingly 
have forced him from it by severity. This coldness and aversion 
increased with years ; so that Frederick, when his father, out of 
caprice, refused to sanction his intended marriage with an English 
princess, embraced the resolution with a few young friends of flying 
to England. An intercepted letter of Frederick's to his 
confidant, the lieutenant von Katte, revealed the secret. 
The king foamed with rage. He commanded the crown prince to be 
brought to a fortress, and Katte to be executed before the windows ; 
all those who were suspected of being implicated were severely 
punished by the irritated monarch. It was not until Frederick had 



312 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

penitently implored his father's pardon, that he was released from 
the fortress, and had his sword and uniform restored to him. Shortly 
after this, followed the marriage of Frederick with a 
daughter of the princely house of Braunschweig-Bevern. 
But his spirit found little pleasure in the narrow bounds of domestic 
life ; he seldom visited his wife, especially after his father had re- 
linquished the little town of Bheinsberg to him, where, from this 
time, he led a cheerful life amidst a circle of intellectual, accom- 
plished, and free-thinking friends, in which wit, jest, and lively con- 
versation alternated with grave and diversified studies. He read 
the works of the ancients in Trench translations, and derived from 
them a noble ambition of emulating the heroes of Greece and Borne 
in their mighty deeds and their mental cultivation ; he admired 
French literature, and conceived such a veneration for Voltaire, that 
he addressed the most flattering letters to him, and, at a later period, 
summoned him to his presence. They were both however soon con- 
vinced that no personal intercourse could long endure between men 
of such similarly sarcastic natures, and separated from each other 
in anger ; a correspondence was nevertheless still kept up in writing. 
Frederick displayed his free way of thinking by receiving a number 
of French authors who had been banished from France on account of 
the hostility of their writings to the Church ; and, after his ascension 
of the throne, proved the liberality of his views in regard 
to religion, by recalling "Wolf to Halle, with the well- 
known expression, " that in his kingdom every man might be happy 
in his own way." 

4. THE TIMES OE EREDERICK II. AND MARIA THERESA. 
a. THE AUSTRIAN WAR OE SUCCESSION (a.D. 1740 — 1748). 

§ 432. The emperor Charles VI., a good-natured but in no ways 
distinguished prince, died shortly after the ascension of Frederick II., 
September having, however, concluded the disgraceful peace of Bel- 
18, 1739. grade with the Turks previous to his death. As he had 
no male heirs, it had been his anxious care throughout his whole 
reign, to secure the succession of his only daughter, Maria Theresa, 
wife of Francis Stephen of Lorraine, to the hereditary states of Aus- 
tria. With this object, he purchased, by great sacrifices, the acknow- 
ledgment from all the courts of the domestic law known as the Prag- 
matic Sanction, by virtue of which, the Austrian hereditary lands 
remained undivided, aud, in the event of the male line becoming 
extinct, descended upon the female branch. Scarcely had the emperor 
closed his eyes, before Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, who was 
descended from the eldest daughter of the emperor Ferdinand I., 
made claims upon* the Austrian patrimonial states, not only in l-ight 
of his descent, but upon some pretended testamentary intentions of 



FREDERICK II. MARIA THERESA. 313 

the emperor. Charles Albert, who was a weak, narrow-minded man, 
devoted to superstition and ostentation, would not have been in a 
position to make his claims valid by the resources of his exhausted 
land, had not the French court, despite its acknowledgment of the 
Pragmatic Sanction, supported him with money and troops, in the 
hope of thereby rendering the emperor and the German nation 
dependent upon France. In the treaty of JNymphenberg the Bavarian 
elector sold himself to France, as his predecessor, Charles Emanuel 
(§ 410) had done before, for gold for his vanity, and troops for the 
acquisition of the throne. Frederick II. of Prussia, however, was not 
willing to let slip the favourable opportunity of urging the established 
pretensions of his family to the inheritance of the Silesian princi- 
palities of Jagendorf, Leignitz, Brieg, and "Wohlau, and accordingly 
supported the Bavarian elector in his claims upon Austria, Hungary, 
and Bohemia, and in his suit for the imperial crown. Saxony, also, 
would not relinquish her share of the expected booty ; the indolent 
and stupid Augustus III., who left his government entirely in the 
hands of the extravagant and unprincipled coivnt Briihl, raised claims 
to Moravia, and brought inexpressible misery upon his wretched and 
heavily oppressed country by his participation in the war. 
October 10, § 433. A few weeks after the death of Charles YI., 

1740. Frederick II. marched with his admirable army into 
Silesia. The king himself accompanied his troops, more for the sake 
of learning the art of war, and of exciting the courage of the soldiers 
by his presence, than with any purpose of assuming the chief com- 
mand, which he rather relinquished to the two experienced generals, 

a.d. 1740 Schwerin and Leopold of Dessau. This first Sdesian war 

1742. soon showed that a fresh spirit had come over the Prus- 

April 10, sians. After their victory in the battle of Molwitz, they 
1 ? 41 - took possession of the greater part of Upper and Lower 

Silesia. 

The French army, under Belleisle, shortly after marched into Ger- 
many, and being supported by Bavaria and Saxony, made themselves 
masters of the territories of Upper Austria and Bohemia. Charles 
October, Albert received homage as archduke in Linz, and was in- 

1741. vested with the royal crown of Bohemia at Prague, in the 
midst of magnificent coronation banquets. He now stood at the 
Charles VII., summ it of his happiness. The election of emperor had 
a.d. 1741— terminated in his favour, and he was already making pre- 
parations for a splendid coronation in Frankfurt. 

§ 434. In this distress, Maria Theresa turned towards the Hun- 
garians. At a Diet in Presburg (where, according to a widely-circu- 
lated legend, she is said to have appeared with her young son, Joseph, 
in her arms) she excited such an enthusiasm among the magnates by 
the description of her distresses, and by gracious promises, that they 



314 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

rose up with an unanimous shout of " Vivat Maria Tlieresa Rex," 
and called their warlike countrymen to arms. The Tyrolese also, in 
a similar manner, announced their ancient truthfulness to Austria. A 
gallant force soon marched into the field from the lowlands of Hun- 
gary. The warldce tribes of the Theiss and the Marosch, the wild 
bands of the Croats, Slaves, and Pandours, under the conduct of 
Khevenhiiller and Barenklau (Pereklo), marched into Austria, drove 
back the Bavarian and French troops with little difficulty, and pressed 
forward, plundering and ravaging, into Bavaria. At the very moment 
at which Charles Albert, by French assistance, and in the midst of 
splendid banquets, was invested with the much-coveted imperial 
January 24, crown, the enemy entered his capital, Munich, occupied 
1742. Landshut, and foraged the country as far as the Lech 

with their wild horsemen. Deprived of his hereditary possessions, 
the new emperor, Charles VII., was soon reduced to such extremities 
that he could only support himself by the assistance of France. 

§ 435. At the same time, an Austrian army marched into Bohemia 
to drive the French out of this country also ; and Maria Theresa, to 
deprive them of the assistance of the Prussians, consented, though 
with a heavy heart, to the peace of Breslau, by which 
' almost the whole of Upper and Lower Silesia was sur- 
rendered to Frederick. In a short time, the greater portion of Bo- 
hemia was again in the hands of the Austrians ; the capital, where 
Belleisle lay with a considerable army, was already besieged. At this 
juncture, Belleisle, by his daring retreat from Prague to Eger, in the 
midst of winter, showed that the military spirit of the French was not 
yet extinguished. The road was indeed strewed with dead or torpid 
bodies, and even those who escaped bore the seeds of death within them. 
In the following spring, Maria Theresa was crowned in 
Prague, and at the same time acquired a powerful con- 
federate in George II. of Hanover and England. After 
June 27 1743. . 

" the battle of Dettingen (near Aschaffenburg), where the 

English and Austrian troops bore off the victory, the French retreated 
over the Rhine, and Saxony embraced the cause of Austria and 
received subsidies from England. 

§ 436. The success of the Austrians rendered Frederick II. anxious 
for the possession of SUesia, and he therefore commenced a second 
a.d. 1744, Silesian war against Maria Theresa. Whilst he was 
1745. hastily advancing upon Bohemia, as a confederate of the 

emperor, with a strong army of imperial auxiliaries, Charles VII. 
found an opportunity of regaining his hereditary territory of Bavaria, 
January 20, au( l °f returning to his capital, Munich, where, however, 
1745. he shortly after died. His son, Maximilian Joseph, 

renounced all claim to the Austrian heritage in the treaty 
of Fiissen, and at the election of emperor, gave his voice 



THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 315 

for the husband of Maria Theresa, whereupon the latter was crowned 

in Frankfurt as Francis I. In the mean while, Frederick II. had 

lost the greater part of Silesia to the brave Austrian field-marshal, 

Traun, but the splendid victory of Hohenfriedberg again 

restored him the superiority. The military renown of 

the Prussian monarch, and of his generals, Ziethen, Winterfeld, and 

others, had spread far and wide, and prince Ferdinand of Brunswick 

gave the first proof of his talents as a general at Sorr. "When the old 

Dessauer conquered the Saxons in the midst of winter, in the bloody 

field of Kesselsdorf, and Frederick marched into the capital of Dres- 

December25, den, which had been deserted by Augustus III., Maria 

1745. Theresa, in the peace of Dresden, again consented to the 

ncis I., cession of Silesia; and Frederick, in return, acknowledged 
a.d. 1745— ,,.',' ' ' 6 

1765. her husband as emperor. 

§ 437. The war, which was ended in Grermany, continued for some 
time longer in the Netherlands. It was here that the French, imder 
the conduct of the talented and brave, but unmoral and dissolute, 
marshal of Saxony, a natural son of Frederick Augustus II., gained a 

a.d. 1745 succession of splendid victories in the battles of Fonte- 

1747- noy, Paucoux, and Laffeld, by which the Austrian Nether- 

lands fell almost entirely into their power. But as the exhausted 
states were all longing for a cessation of hostilities, the 
20 1748. peace of Aix was at length arranged, by which the Aus- 
trian hereditary territories were awarded to Maria Theresa, 
with the exception of Silesia, which remained with Prussia, and a few 
possessions in Italy, which she gave up to Sardinia and to the Spanish- 
Bourbon prince, Philip (§ 416). The other states resumed their 
former relations, and France gained nothing by this expensive war 
but military renown. 

b. THE SEVEN tears' wae (a.d. 1756 1763). 

§ 438. Maria Theresa could not forget the loss of Silesia. She 
therefore took advantage of the eight years of peace that followed the 
conclusion of the Austrian war of succession, to form alliances that 
produced important consequences. Russia's dissolute empress, Eliza- 
beth, offended by the sarcasms of Frederick, was easily induced by 
her minister, Bestucheff, to enter into a confederation with Maria 
Theresa ; as was also Augustus III. of Saxony by count Briihl, who 
likewise felt himself injmed by the scorn with which the great king 
always spoke of him. But it was a master-stroke of crafty policy 
that Maria Theresa, by her shrewd and dexterous minister, Kaunitz, 
induced the court of Versailles to renounce the ancient policy of 
France, which had always been directed to weakening the house of 
Hapsburg, and to unite itself with Austria against Prussia. For many 
years past, Louis XV. had allowed himself to be led into a profligate 



316 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

course of life by the pleasure-seeking and dissolute nobles. In the 
society of his licentious favourites and shameless mistresses, he gave 
himself up entirely to his sensual nature, and plunged from one plea- 
sure into another. In the excesses of the table, and the joys of the 
chase and the bottle, he forgot his kingdom and the welfare of his 
people. Maria Theresa made use of these circumstances for her own 
advantage. The proud empress, who stood upon her morality and 
virtue, descended so far as to write a nattering letter to Louis's 
all-powerful mistress, the marquise Pompadour, for the purpose of 
winning her over to her interest. An alliance was accordingly entered 
into, by means of the Pompadour and her creatures, by France and 
Austria, the object of which was to deprive the king of Prussia of his 
September, conquests, and to reduce him again to the condition of 
1751. an elector of Brandenburg. 

§ 439. Frederick, who received accurate information of all the 
plots laid against him from a secretary of Braid's, 
whom he had corrupted, determined to anticipate his 
enemies by an unexpected attack. He fell suddenly upon Saxony, 
took possession of Leipsic, "Wittenberg, and Dresden, which had been 
deserted by the court, and established the Prussian form of govern- 
ment. The taxes and all the public rents were seized, the magazines 
thrown open to the Prussian army, and the arms and artillery sent 
to Magdeburg. For the purpose of justifying these proceedings he 
published the documents which he had discovered in Dresden, and 
which contained the plans of his opponents. The Saxon troops, who 
had taken up a strong position at Pirna, on the Elbe, were blockaded 
by the Prussians, and compelled by hunger to surrender. 14,000 
gallant warriors were made prisoners. Frederick compelled them to 
enter the Prussian service ; but they fled in troops at the first oppor- 
tunity into Poland, where the Saxon court remained during the whole 
war. Frederick lingered in Dresden, and exacted heavy contributions 
in money and recruits from the conquered country, for which, war 
was declared against him by the German empire, for breach of the 
Land-peace ; and the aristocratic government of Sweden, which only 
acted according to the instigations of France, also joined the enemies 
of Prussia. It was only England and a few German states (Hanover, 
Brunswick, Hesse- Cassel, Gotha) that adhered to the cause of 
Frederick. 

§ 440. In the spring of the following year, Frederick marched with 

his chief force towards Bohemia, whilst his allies advanced 

against the French, who were between the Ehine and the 

Weser. By the gallant efforts of his troops, and by the heroic courage 

Ma G 1757 an< ^ ner oic aca th of Schwerin, Frederick won the splendid 

June 18 ^ Jut ^ ear ^ bought victory of Prague. But no later than the 

following month, the defeat at Collin by the brave Austrian 



THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 317 

field-marshal Daun, deprived the Prussian king of all his advantages. 
His melancholy hoth before and after the day of Collin gave evidence of 
the weight of care by which he was oppressed. A short time after, 
the Trench also gained a victory over Frederick's allies at 
U y ' Hastenbeck, on the Weser, and prepared to take up their 

Avinter quarters in Saxony along with the German imperial army. 
The prince of Soubise, a favourite of madame Pompadour, and a con- 
fidential associate in the orgies of Louis XV., was already on the 
Saale with a large army, when Frederick made an unexpected attack, 
and in the battle of Rosbach gained a most splendid victory. 
The imperial army fled so hastily at the very commence- 
ment of the battle, that it received the name of the Runaway Army 
from the jests of the witty ; the French soon followed, abandoning 
their baggage, which was rich in articles of luxury and fashion. Seyd- 
litz, the leader of the cavalry, had particularly distinguished himself. 
A month later, the Prussian king also won a famous vie- 
tory from Daun, in the battle of Beuthen, and again oc- 
cupied Silesia. But in the mean time, the miseries of war pressed 
heavily upon poor Germany ; Hanover, Brunswick, and Hesse- 
Cassel, in particular, were harshly treated by the extravagant and 
dissolute duke of Richelieu, by exactions and military levies. 

§ 441. Since the battle of Rosbach, Frederick had 

been no less the idol of the people in England, than in 

France and Germany. The English ministry, in which the elder 

Pitt (Lord Chatham) possessed the greatest influence, accordingly 

determined to support the king of Prussia more liberally with troops 

and money ; and to leave the appointment of generals in his hands. 

He named the circumspect Ferdinand of Brunswick the leader of the 

allied force, who drove back the French over the Rhine 

in the commencement of the spring, and secured the 

north of Germany against their predatory inroads. In the mean 

while, the Russians, under Bestucheff, had penetrated as far as the 

Oder ; but as this general behaved in a very ambiguous maimer during 

a dangerous illness of the empress Elizabeth, he was banished, and 

Fermor appointed in his stead. The latter occupied East Prussia, 

compelled Konigsburg to do homage, and advanced with his wild 

hordes, ravaging and plundering, into Brandenburg. Hereupon, 

Frederick executed a masterly march upon the Oder, and, in the 

bloody battle of Zorndorf, gained a victory that was 

certainly dearly purchased. After this, Frederick wished 

to march into Saxony to the assistance of his brother Henry ; but 

being surprised in an unfavourable position by the superior force of 

Daun, he lost the whole of his artillery and many brave 

soldiers in the attack at Hochkirck. He nevertheless 



318 THE MODERN EPOCH. 

effected a juncture -with Henry by a dexterous march, and again 
drove the enemy out of Silesia and Saxony. 

§ 442. Frederick's means of continuing the war began 
to dwindle. Whilst he was with difficulty filling up the 
gaps hi his ranks by oppressive levies of young and inexperienced 
recruits, and could only supply his want of money and necessaries by 
severe war-taxes and imposts, Maria Theresa was constantly receiving 
fresh supplies of money and men from France and Russia. 

For the purpose of preventing the union of the Russians and 
Austrians, Frederick advanced to the Oder, but was so completely 
defeated by the Austrians under their skilful general, Laudon, in the 
August 12, bloody engagement of Kunersdorf, after he had already 
1759. victoriously repulsed the Russians, that he began to 

despair of a successful termination of the war. Dresden, and the 
greater part of Saxony was lost to the Prussians. But the want of 
union between the Russians and Austrians prevented the proper ad- 
vantage being taken of the victory. In the mean time, the allies of 
Frederick, under Ferdinand of Brunswick, had been more successfully 
engaged against the French. It is true, that Broglio had obtained 
April 13, the advantage in the battle of Bergen at Frankfurt-on-the 
1759. Main, but Ferdinand's victory at Minden drove back the 

French over the Rhine, and saved Westphalia and Hanover. 

§ 443. The war had already so weakened the Prussian 
army, that the king, contrary to his usual custom, was 
compelled to remain on the defensive. It is true that Frederick's 
name, and the dexterity of his recruiting officers, brought troops of 
soldiers from all quarters to the Prussian standard ; but even Frede- 
rick's military talents could not entirely replace the loss of expert 
officers and veteran troops. To defray the expenses of the war he 
was obliged to have recourse to the most oppressive taxes and to a 
debased coinage. Whilst Frederick was in Saxony, the brave Fou- 
quet, the friend of the king, suffered a defeat in Silesia, in consequence 
of which the Austrians took possession of the whole country. Upon 
this, Frederick relinquished Saxony, that he might again conquer 

Sdesia. He gained this obiect bv the victory over Laudon 
August 15. 

at Leignitz on the Katzback ; but he was unable to pre- 
vent the Austrian and Russian troops from breaking into the march, 
taking possession of Berlin, and visiting the hereditary lands of the 
king with plunder and desolation. Daun now occupied a strong 
position on an eminence near the Elbe, for the purpose of wintering 
in Saxony. To prevent this, Frederick hazarded a desperate attack 
upon Daun's camp, though his brave soldiers fell in crowds before 
t the artillery. By the dearly bought victory of Torgau, 

which was gained by the assistance of Ziethen, the Prus- 



THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 319 

sian king again regained Saxony, and could make, his winter quarters 
in Leipsic : but 14,000 of his soldiers required no shelter ; Daun's 
camp had been their burial place. 

§ 444. (1761—1763.) In the year 1761 it appeared that Frederick 
must succumb before the disasters that were pouring in upon him on 
all sides, for not only had his numerous enemies taken possession of 
a great part of his lands, but England, after the accession of George 
III., had refused all farther assistance. Frederick indeed resisted 
with vigour the enemies that were pressing upon him, but his melan- 
choly and despondency are betrayed in his letters to his friends, and 
in his poetry. It appeared that Sdesia must fall to Austria, and 
Prussia to Eussia. But in the very extremity of Frederick's distress, 
January 5, the empress Elizabeth died, and her nephew, who was a 

1762. great venerator of the Prussian king, ascended the throne 
of Eussia. This change produced a sudden alteration in the state of 
affairs. Peter, a good-natured but inconsiderate prince, who acted 
over hastily, at once concluded a treaty of peace with Frederick, and 
united his Eussian army with the Prussian. This connexion, how- 
ever, did not last long. Peter made enemies of his subjects by im- 
prudent innovations in the Church and State, and by remodelling the 
army upon the Prussian pattern. A conspiracy was formed against 
him, with the knowledge of his wife, whom Peter treated harshly on 
account of her dissolute behaviour, in consequence of which, Peter 
III. was barbarously murdered by some Eussian noblemen, and Ca- 
therine II. made herself mistress of the government which 
belonged by right to her son, Paul. The empress recalled 

her army from Prussia, but confirmed the peace that had been con- 
cluded with Frederick ; and the Eussian general, before his departure, 
assisted the Prussian king in obtaining a victory. 

§ 445. The exhausted states were now all anxious for the conclusion 
of the war. The Germans, whose lands had been ravaged, whose 
industry had become stagnant, whose agriculture had been ruined, 
and whose prosperity had been destroyed, demanded peace in despair ; 
this induced the greater number of the princes to withdraw from the 
alliance against Frederick ; and as the finances of Austria were also 
deranged, Maria Theresa no longer opposed the peace that was uni- 
February 21, versally desired. A truce afforded an opportunity for 

1763. negotiations, which, in the following February, led to the 
peace of Hubertsburg. In this, the possession of Sdesia was secured 
to the king of Prussia for ever. The fluctuating land and naval war, 
that had been carried on between England and France in America, 
was at the same time terminated by the peace of Paris, by which 
England got possession of Canada. From this time, Prussia assumed 
her position among the five great powers of Europe. 



320 THE MODERN EPOCH. 



C. THE GERMAN EMPIRE AND THE AGE OE EREDERICK. 

§ 446. The German empire had so entirely lost all respect as a 
political body, that it was not represented at the peace negotiations at 
Hubertsburg, and that the sentence of outlawry pronounced against 
Frederick II. was received with scorn aud ridicule. The power of 
the emperor was sunk to an empty shadow, and his revenue to a few 
thousand florins. Nearly 350 regents and republican commonwealths 
with the most varied powers and the most unequal extent of territory, 
ruled in Germany with all the rights of sovereignty, and left nothing 
to their common chief but the confirmation of mutual compacts, pro- 
motions, declarations of majority, and the determination of precedence. 
During war, the German princes not unfrequently embraced the hos- 
tile cause. Bavaria was always in alliance with France. The Diet, 
which had, for a long time, been held in Eegensburg, and which con- 
sisted of representatives of the princes and imperial towns, had lost 
all respect, since it was too much occupied with speeches and debates 
to come to any decision, or if it came to any, was unable to give 
it authority. Obsolete rights were contended for with a little- 
minded jealousy ; rank, title, and the right of suffrage, were watched 
over with the greatest care, and all time and energy devoted to doc- 
trinal disputes without object ; whilst foreign nations made Germany 
the theatre of their wars, and treated the imbecile body politic with 
insolence and contempt. The state of tribunals of justice was not 
less melancholy. The imperial chamber of "Wetzlar, in which the 
complaints of Estates of the empire against each other or against 
their vassals were examined, proceeded with such tediousness and 
prolixity, that causes were often pending for years before judgment 
was pronounced, the suitors either died or fell into poverty, and the 
records increased to an immeasurable extent. The judges were chiefly 
dependent upon the fees for their remuneration, and in this way a 
door was thrown open to corruption. An attempt on the part of the 
Joseph II emperor, Joseph II., to improve and accelerate the pro- 
a.d. 1765— gress of justice in the imperial chamber was frustrated by 
the selfishness of the interested parties. As regards the 
lower courts, the great diversity in the laws, the number of small 
states, and the unlimited power of the judges and officials, rendered 
it extremely difficult for the humble man to procure justice. The 
weak were exposed without defence to every injustice of the crafty 
and the strong. It was the golden age of jurists and advocates. 

§ 447. Whilst the German empire was sinking lower and lower, 
Prussia, under her sagacious and energetic king, rose to ever increas- 
ing power and prosperity. Frederick attempted to heal the wounds 
inflicted by the seven years' war, to the best of his ability, by support- 
ing the decayed land proprietors and the manufacturers in Silesia 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE AND THE AGE OF FREDERICK. 321 

and the March with money, by remitting their taxes for a few years, 
and by relieving the lot of the peasants. He encouraged agriculture, 
planting, and mining ; established colonies in the uncultivated portions 
of his dominions ; and fostered industry, trade, and commerce with the 
greatest care. By these means the country became prosperous, and 
he was enabled to increase his taxes without oppressing the people, 
His own frugality, the simplicity of his court, and the well-regulated 
economy of the state, were the occasion that the public treasury was 
every year better replenished. It was not until a later period that 
he adopted severe and oppressive measures. Among these, his 
management of the customs and excise maybe particularly mentioned. 
He made the sale of coffee, tobacco, salt, &c, a royal monopoly, and 
forbade the free trade in these articles. For the purpose of prevent- 
ing any clandestine traffic, he appointed a number of French excise 
officers, who, by their insolence, made the regulation, which was other- 
wise so oppressive to the citizens and peasants, utterly detestable. 
The affairs of the Church and of education gained the least by the 
attention of the king. In a small place, the situation of public in- 
structor was frequently a retiring post for a discharged petty officer, 
whilst the higher institutions were often left to the management 
of Frenchmen. The free-thinking king took little interest in the 
affairs of Christianity or the Church ; but we must admit with honour 
that he procured the universal admission of the principle of Christian 
toleration in his dominions. Frederick devoted great attention to 
the affairs of justice. The rack and the horrible and degrading 
punishments of the middle age were abolished, the course of justice 
simplified, and the laws improved. The new book of laws that was 
introduced under his successor, Frederick "William II., as the Prus- 
sian code, was prepared under Frederick. More important, however, 
than all these laws and arrangements was the fact, that Frederick II. 
inspected every thing himself, and narrowly inquired, during his jour- 
neys, after the administration of justice and the management of 
affairs, ejected the negligent and chastised the dishonest. By his 
untiring activity from early morning to late at night, he acquired a 
comprehensive knowledge of all the affairs of his kingdom, and his 
commanding character, which scrupled not at corporal punishment, 
terrified the slothful and the unjust. One peculiarity of the great 
king has often been blamed with justice — his love for what was 
foreign, and his neglect, nay contempt, for the things of his own coun- 
try. It was not only in literature that Frederick gave the preference 
to the French, so that he wrote his own letters and works in their 
language, the whole proceedings of this nation were admired, and, as 
far as possible, imitated by him. French adventurers by the hundred 
found honour and support in Prussia; and as this admiration of 
foreigners became the mode in other courts, all quarters of Germany 

T 



3:22 the modern epoch. 

swarmed with hair-brained Frenchmen. Parisian barbers, dancing- 
masters, and boasters, were often preferred to the most deserving 
natives in the appointment to the higher offices of the court and 
government. 

§ 448. Frederick, in his old age, was once more involved in a war 
with Austria. At the close of the year 1777, the Bavarian line of 
the house of "Wittelsbach became extinct with Maximilian Joseph, 
and the electorship devolved to the next heir, Charles Theodore of 
the Palatinate. This licentious, profligate, and bigoted prince, who, 
despite his many failings and vices, is still affectionately remembered 
by the people of the Palatinate, and whose love of art is borne witness 
to by many remarkable erections in Mannheim, Scbwetzingen, and 
Heidelberg, possessed neither legitimate offspring nor love for the 
land he inherited. He consequently easily allowed himself to be per- 
suaded by the emperor Joseph II. to a treaty, in which he acknow- 
ledged the validity of Austria's claims to Lower Bavaria, the Upper 
Palatinate, and the territory of Mindelheim, and declared himself 
ready to relinquish these lands in return for certain advantages being 
assured to his natural chddren. Frederick II., alarmed at this ag- 
grandizement of Austria, attempted to interfere with the project by 
inducing the future hen, duke Charles of Zweibrucken, to protest 
against the contract in the Diet ; and as this was attended by no 
results, he ordered an army to march into Bohemia to prevent any 
change in the existing state of things. This gave occasion to the 
a.d. 1778, Bavarian war of succession, which was carried on more 
1779- with the pen than the sword, inasmuch as both parties 

attempted to prove themselves in the right by learned treatises. But 
as all the states were averse to a general war, Russia and Prance 
succeeded in persuading Maria Theresa, who had no liking for the 
zeal for innovation displayed by her son, to the peace of Teschen, 
by which Bavaria was secured to the house of the Palatinate, Inn- 
viertel with Braunau to Austria, and the succession of the Margra- 
vate of Anspach and Bayreuth to Prussia. The emperor, irritated at 
this, made a second attempt, after the death of Maria Theresa, to 
possess himself of Bavaria, offering in exchange the Aus- 
trian Netherlands (Belgium) as the Burgundian kingdom. 
Charles Theodore allowed himself to be persuaded to this also. But 
Frederick II. now attempted to frustrate this project, and to secure 
the succession in Bavaria to the house of the Palatinate, by establish- 
ing an alliance of princes, which was gradually joined by most of the 
princes of Germany. This princely confederation increased the 
power and consequence of the king of Prussia, in the same proportion 
that it entirely undermined the authority of the emperor. Each 
prince sought for independent and unlimited power ; each formed a 
miniature court, to which, in magnificence and profusion, in morals 



THE INTELLECTUAL POPULAR LIFE IN GERMANY. S23 

and fashions, in language, literature, and art, the court of Versailles 
served as a pattern. 

d. THE INTELLECTUAL POPULAR LIEE EST GERMANY. 

§ 449. Prejudicial as this division of Germany was to its external 
power and greatness, it was in an equal degree advantageous to the 
development of the arts and sciences. Many princes were patrons 
and encouragers of literature and cultivation ; they sought to attract 
men of celebrity to their capitals and universities, and encouraged 
poets and men of learning to undertake great works by rewards 
and distinctions. Thus it happened, that in the second half of 
the eighteenth century, when Germany's political and military 
consequence was entirely lost, literature, poetry, science, and the 
entire spiritual life, received a mighty impulse, and created a degree 
of refinement such as has scarcely been equalled in modern history. 
Klopstock. Poetry especially flourished. Klopstock, by his great 
a.d. 1724— epic poem, the "Messiah," and by his odes and Avar- 
1803. songs, awakened a warmth of Christian feeling, and a 

patriotic spirit of liberty ; he formed his severe and solemn diction 
and his rhymeless metre upon the model of the ancients. Les- 
Lessing, a.d. sing, the great thinker and critic, in his " Hamburg- 
1729—1781. Dramaturgy," first exposed the weakness of French 
dramatic literature, and by his own pieces for the stage (" Minna von 
Barnhelm," "Emilia Galotti," "Nathan the Wise") showed the way by 
which it was possible to attain to genuine dramatic poetry; he at 
the same time, in his " Laocoon," opened the eyes of thinkers to the 
essence of poetry and plastic art, the understanding of which was 
Winckelmann veYee ^ G & during the same period by "Winckelmann, in a 
a.d. 1717— 'different way; and in his remarkable controversial 
!768. writings against the pastor Goze of Hamburg, on the 

Wolfenbuttel fragments, he displayed a vigour of language and a 
clearness of argument which are astonishing. Upon his shoulders 
Herder, a.d. stands the poetical and intellectual Herder, who went 
1744—1803. -back to the original source of language and poetry, and 
revealed with fine taste the beauties of the Oriental poetry of nature 
("On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," "Palm-leaves," &c), and dis- 
played the deep merit of the artless popular songs of different 
nations (in the " Cid," " Voices of the People in Songs"), and gave 
a mighty impulse to further inquiries by his " Ideas towards a Philo- 
Wieland, a.d. sophy of the History of Man." Wieland, the cheerful 
1733—1813. philosopher of life, in his romances ("Agathon," "The 
Abderites," " Aristippus"), which are for the most part based upon 
the ancient Greek manners, with a modern colouring, addressed the 
sentiments and mode of thinking of the upper classes, which were 
formed upon the French model, and preached the wise enjoyment of 

t2 



304, THE MODERN EPOCH. 

life in loose and "waggish language, a doctrine well suited to the 
higher ranks of society, and introduced German literature into a 
circle that had hitherto read nothing but French works. He, at the 
same time, renewed the romantic epic poetry of the middle age in his 
" Oberon." German prose received a complete revolution from these 
three men: Lessing gave it strength, sharpness, and perspicuity; 
Herder, elevation and richness of imagery ; "Wieland, fluency and 
Goethe, a.d. grace. It was on the ground prepared by these men, that 
1749—1832. Goethe, the great genius of the century, brought forward 
his creations, in which the spiritual life of the nation and the progress 
of his own culture are reflected. At the genial and energetic age of 
seventeen, when the youth who was pressing onwards with violence 
despised all the rules of art and of customary usage, set no value on 
any thing but the productions (even when formless) of genius, 
praised the depths of original and natural poetry, delighted in popular 
ballads, and gazed in wondering admiration upon Ossian and Shak- 
spear, "The Sorrows of "Wertker," a romance in letters, and the 
drama of " Gotz von Berlichingen," in which these poets served as 
models, awakened a storm of enthusiasm ; when Lessing and "Winckel- 
mann had revived the interest for ancient art in Germany, in the 
time adapted for them appeared the classical dramas "Tasso" and 
"Iphigenia," in the spirit and in the clear and harmonious form of 
antiquity, and animated by the impressions and feelings that the poet 
had received during his travels in Italy, and which are reflected in 
the unsurpassable popular scenes of the tragedy of " Egmont." The 
idyllic epic " Hermann and Dorothea," touched upon the mighty 
period of the French revolution and the sorrows of the emigrants ; 
the romance of " Wilhelm Meister," in which the life of a player is 
described, and the novel of " Elective Attractions," belong to the 
new-romantic time, which found pleasure in the mysterious, the 
wonderful, and the fabulous. In " Poetry and Truth " Goethe 
displays the progress of his own life and mental development ; and in 
the magnificent dramatic poem of " Faust " with which we find him 
engaged throughout his whole life, he has left to posterity a picture 
of the most inward conditions of his soul. In the mean while, the 
political world had experienced violent convulsions, and the atten- 
tion of the people was directed towards history and the affairs of 
Schiller state. At this juncture, Schiller, by his historical dramas, 

a.t). 1759— that presented before the soul of the nation similar 
180o# tempestuous periods taken from foreign and domestic 

history, and by his enthusiasm for freedom, fatherland, and human 
happiness, struck the chords that found the deepest response in 
the bosoms of the people. His first three tragedies, "The Rob- 
bers," "Love and Intrigue," and " Fiesko," belong to the stormy 
period of youth; with the drama of "Don Carlos" begins a more 



THE INTELLECTUAL POPULAR LIFE IN GERMANY. 3^5 

refined period ; during his residence in Jena as professor of his- 
tory, he occupied himself with the " Thirty Tears' "War," with the 
"Revolt of the Netherlands," and with the trilogy of " Wallenstein ;" 
and in the last years of his life, in Weimar, which were rendered 
gloomy by sickness and anxieties about the means of subsistence, he 
composed "Maria Stuart," the "Maid of Orleans," the "Bride of 
Messina," and the magnificent drama of " William Tell." Schiller 
gained the friendship of Goethe by the purity of his feelings and the 
truthfulness of his efforts, different as the natures of the two men 
were. Then united activity marks the culminating point of German 
poetry. 

§ 450. But not poetry alone, but the science of religion, philosophy, 
history, the affairs of education, in a word, the whole spiritual life, 
experienced a mighty revolution. Protestant theologians searched 
through the Bible, and presented systems of Christianity in accord- 
Lavater, a.d. ance with the direction of their own minds. Some, like 
174] — 1801. Lavater, the pastor of Zurich, sought to preserve the 
world in a rigid faith by means of religious writings, and to establish 
the conviction that man is brought into immediate union with God 
Nioolai, a.d. b.Y prayer ; others, like the Berlin bookseller and author, 
1783—1811. Nicolai, would admit no other judge in spiritual things 
than human reason and the power of reflection, and declared that 
every thing that was opposed to this was superstition. The former 
class were called Supernaturalists, the latter Rationalists. A third 
party, which included Hamann, the philosopher, Pr. H. Jacobi, and 
the poet Fr. Stolberg, made religion, like the mystics of the middle 
ages, a matter of feeling. Lavater was also the inventor of the 
dubious science of physiognomy, which teaches how to discover men's 
characters from the contour of the head and features of the coun- 
tenance, but was exposed to some severe attacks from the clever 
humorist and satirist, Lichtenberg of Gottingen. In philosophy, 
Kant, a.d. the great thinker Kant of Konigsburg, erected a system 
1724—1804. that soon penetrated into all the sciences, and excited 
and swayed the learned world of Germany. Spittler, by his perspi- 
cuity and acuteness, and the Swiss, John Muller, by his learning and 
artistic descriptions, established a new epoch in historical writing ; 
and in the affairs of education, Basedow, by the model seminary of 
Dessau (Philanthropium), and Campe and Salzmann, by their writings 
for children, called a new method of instruction into existence, upon 
which the Swiss, Pestalozzi, founded his system of infant education 
and of popular schools. 



BOOK FOURTH. 



THE LATEST PERIOD. 



A. THE FORERUNNERS OE THE REVOLUTION. 

1. THE LITERATURE OE ILLUMINATION. 

§ 451. In the course of the eighteenth century a shock was given 
to all existing ideas by the literature of France. Ingenious, but, in 
part, mistaken men, opposed religious constitutions and ecclesiastical 
order, attacked the forms of government, and represented the condi- 
tions and shapes of society in the light of antiquated abuses. "Whilst 
at first they laid hold of real blemishes and faidts as points of attack, 
in religion and Church, in politics and law, in civil regulations and 
social relations, they undermined by degrees all the foundations of 
human society, and convidsed all rides of customary ordinances ; 
whilst they sought to annid immunities, privileges, and class preroga- 
tives, and to give freedom and personal merit their due value, they 
weakened also the force of old statutes and rights, and the strength 
of authority; and whdst they assailed superstitious prejudices and 
worn-out opinions, they perplexed at the same time faith and con- 
science, destroyed the veneration and esteem for things holy and 
customary in the hearts of men, and propagated the idea that the 
happiness of the world could blossom only on the ruins of existing 
things. This was done especially by Voltaire, Montesquieu, and 
Rousseau, whose ingenious writings, owing to the charm of beautiful 
language and powers of description, were read by the whole of edu- 
cated Europe. Their paths were different, but the result the same. 

§ 452. Voltaire, a versatile and ingenious author, who had dis- 
Voltaire tinguished himself in all kinds of literature, attacked 

a.d. 1G94- with the arms of wit and a sharp intellect every thins? 

177!' • • 

' '' customaiy and old-established, all dominant opinions and 

existing regulations, without concerning himself about what should 

come in their place. In poems, dramatic and epic, ("Mahomet," 

"The Henriad," " The Maid of Orleans,") in satires and romances, 



LITERATURE OF ILLUMINATION. 327 

in historical and philosophical works (" Essay on the Customs and 
Genius of Nations," " Times of Louis XIV.," "History of Charles 
XII. of Sweden," &c.) he laid down his views and doubts, his 
thoughts and criticisms, his investigations and conclusions. Religion 
and Church, priesthood and popidar belief, experienced the most 
violent attacks; and if it cannot be denied that Voltaire's scorn and 
wit has destroyed many prejudices, removed many superstitions, and 
exhibited ecclesiastical exclusiveness in all its nakedness, so also, on 
the other hand, it is to be lamented that he has broken down religious 
feeling in many a heart, sown doubt and unbelief in many a mind, 
together with cold, worldly wisdom, and therewith selfishness, and 
represented self-love and self-interest as the highest motives of human 
actions. 

Montesquieu Montesquieu, a more earnest writer, drew attention to 
a.d. 1689— the faultiness and absurdity of the existing state of things, 
with a view to its improvement and reorganization in 
accordance with the spirit of the age. In the " Persian Letters " he 
attacked with the same wanton scorn as Voltaire the faith of the 
Church, and the whole form and system of government in France, 
and in the same way, by wit and irony, turned the customs and social 
position of his contemporaries into ridicule. In his ingenious " Trea- 
tises on the Causes of Greatness," and " The Decline of the Romans, 
and their Republican State," he tried to prove that patriotism and self- 
reliance rendered a state great, but that despotism brought it to destruc- 
tion. His third work, " On the Spirit of the Laws," presents the 
constitutional government of England as that best suited to the pre- 
sent race of men. 

J. J Rous- ^- J- Rousseau, the son of a watchmaker of Geneva, 

seau, a.d. combated existing conditions by an alluring description 
1712 177- f an opposite state of things. After a youth full of muta- 
tions and abounding in necessities and errors, which he has displayed 
to the world with singular candour in his " Confessions," he arrived, 
hy the solution of a prize question on the influence of the arts and 
sciences upon manners, at the fundamental doctrine of his whole life 
and efforts, namely, to the principle, that a high degree of civilization 
is the occasion of all the misery and all the crimes of mankind ; and 
that, consequently, it is only by a return to a state of nature, full of 
innocence and simplicity, and by shakhig off all the fetters imposed 
hy civihzation, education, and custom, that the world can arrive at 
happiness and safety. This principle forms the central point of all 
his writings, which are more distinguished by sentiment and attrac- 
tive descriptions, than by profundity or truthfulness. In the " Nouvelle 
Heloise," a romance written in poetical language and in the episto- 
lary form, he contrasts the pleasures of a sentimental life of nature 
with the perverted relations of actual existence and the compulsions 



3£S THE LATEST PERIOD. 

of society. In the " Emile," lie attempted to establish a rational 
education, founded upon nature and parental affection, and thus 
expiated the sin he had committed by allowing his own children to be 
taken to the foivndling hospital. The " Confession of Eaith of a Savoy 
Vicar," which is to be found in this work, and in which he taught 
and recommended a religion of the heart and feelings in opposition to 
the predominant Church doctrine, brought banishment and persecu- 
tion upon him. In the " Contrat Social " he represented the equality 
of all men as the condition of a well-ordered state, and found the 
most estimable government in a perfect democracy, with legislative 
popular assemblies. In all these writings, golden truths are contained 
side by side with many essential errors and seductive fallacies. His 
words are the expression of a deep inward feeling, and penetrate to 
the heart because they come from the heart. The effect of his writ- 
ings was immeasurable, and every spot which his foot had trod, or 
where he had resided as a persecuted fugitive, was gazed upon with 
reverence by the rising generation. A feeling for nature, simplicity, 
and the domestic affections, was awakened in Trance by Rousseau ; 
but at the same time, there was aroused a passionate longing for the 
lauded state of primitive liberty and equality, which could only be 
slaked by the destruction of existing arrangements and relations. 

§ 453. The influence of these men upon the opinions of all Europe 
was by so much the greater, that Paris then gave the mode 
in every thing, that the French language and literature were alone 
read or spoken by the higher classes, and that these writings excited 
universal attention by their agreeable form and ingenious descrip- 
tions. Princes, like Frederick II., Gustavus III. of Sweden, Charles 
III. of Spain, Catherine II. of Eussia, the greatest statesmen of all 
countries, and many persons of influence, were in personal or epis- 
tolary correspondence, with Voltaire, and many of his similarly-minded 
contemporaries. Among these contemporaries, d'Alembert, mathe- 
matician and philosopher, and the wanton poet, Diderot, are particu- 
larly well known. They were the originators of the Encyclopaedic 
Dictionary, which was a clear, large-minded, and unprejudiced sum- 
mary of all human science, but hostile to every lofty effort. Erom 
this work, they and their coadjutors received the name of Encyclo- 
paedists. 

The first consequence of this literaiy activity was the triumph of 
enlightenment in most of the countries of Europe. This victory 
shortly displayed itself in religious toleration, in the successful 
struggle of reason against superstition and prejudice, in the vigorous 
reforms of many princes and ministers, and then, above 
all, in the abolition of the order of the Jesuits, in the 
formation of the society of Illuminati, in the Latin Avork of the 
suffragan bishop, Hontheim of Treves (who, under the name of Eebro- 



THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 329 

nius, pointed out the origin of the papal power, and attempted to 
derive a new canon law therefrom), and in the attempts of several 
German prelates, in the congress of Ems, to procure for 
the Catholic Church of Germany a free position in regard 
to the Roman See. The order of the Jesuits, the great effort of 
which was to hinder this enlightenment, to retain the people in a 
state of pupilage, and to oppose every reform and innovation, could 
not long exist at a time when the whole educated world was striving 
in the contrary direction. Accordingly, when the minister, Pombal, 
in Portugal, closed the colleges of the Jesuits, and sent the members 
of the order to the States of the Church, and when his example was 
followed in all the countries governed by the house of Bourbon 
(Spain, Naples, Parma), Pope Clement XIV., a liberal and sensible 
prince of the Church, saw himself constrained to abolish 
the order. This obliged Maria Theresa, who had long 
attempted to retain the order in Austria, to consent to its disso- 
lution, and the papal order was also carried into effect in Bavaria and 
the other Catholic countries of Germany. But the activity of the 
members of the order was not thereby put an end to. Ex-Jesuits 
prosecuted the objects of the society with undisturbed perseverance, 
and strove against the spirit of the time. Eor the purpose of para- 
lyzing their efforts, Adam Weishaupt, professor in Ingol- 
stadt, in conjunction with Knigge and others, founded the 
secret society of Illuminati, whose objects were the enlightenment of 
the people, and the improvement of humanity. Their contest against 
the ex-Jesuits, monks, and clergy, was soon checked by the law pro- 
secutions of the Bavarian government. 

2. THE AMEKICAN WAE, OE INDEPENDENCE. 

§ 454. In the war which the British colonies of North America 
carried on against the mother country, in 1770 — 1780, Europe, which 
was filled with the ideas and dreams of Rousseau, saw the beginning 
of that great struggle, by which mankind were to enter into a state 
of paradisiacal happiness ; a struggle, by the victorious termination 
of which, the inborn rights of humanity and the people were to attain 
validity. The North American "War of Independence was the first 
contest of young freedom against the ancient prerogatives, forms, and 
arrangements, and for this reason it had a particular interest for 
Europe. 

In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the 
English colonies in North America had greatly increased in size, in 
population, and in prosperity. This increase had not been obtained 
without great sacrifices and exertions on the part of England ; and 
the English government therefore considered it right and proper to 
impose taxes upon the colonies. With this pixrpose, duties were 



330 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

put upon certain wares, and a stamp-tax introduced. Bat the 
Americans, who had acquired strength and self-confidence from their 
internal development, resisted this taxation. They maintained, that a 
parliament in which they were not represented had no right to bur- 
den them with arbitrary imposts ; and that the duties for their own 
necessities were already sufficiently great. Their cause, which they 
pleaded with dexterity, soon found sympathy in the whole of Europe ; 
and in England itself it was embraced by a powerful party, which 
opposed the measures of government both in speech and writing. At 
the head of this opposition stood the great statesman and orator, the 
elder "William Pitt (Lord Chatham), and the most talented members 
of the Lower House, Eox, Burke, &c. The celebrated " Letters of 
Junius" pamphlets, distinguished by the energy of the language 
and powers of representation, supported the opposition party in its 
struggle. This violent opposition, both on the part of America and 
iu the parliament, produced a change of ministry and a 
repeal of the stamp-tax. But as the government would 
not surrender the right of taxation, and imposed, in the following 
year, a slight duty upon tea, glass, paper, &c, the resistance still 
continued. Boston, the chief town of Massachusetts, and the sur- 
rounding states, which were named collectively, New-England, were 
the scene of the struggle. The inhabitants of this district, mostly 
the descendants of the English Puritans (§ 389), had remained true 
to the defiant and obstinate character of their progenitors. The 
merchants of Boston decided upon admitting none of the taxed 
articles ; and when England immovably persisted upon her right of 
taxation, three cargoes of tea were thrown into the sea bj some 
December y oun g people who had disguised themselves as savages. 
13, 1773. Upon this, the English increased their forces in Boston, 
shut up the harbour, and issued several ordinances injurious to 
liberty. 

§ -155. Tins " Boston Harbour Bill" was the beginning of the war- 
A congress of the deputies from the whole colony met together in 
September Philadelphia, and determined to persist in the resistance, 
17, 1774. and to increase the military strength of the country. The 
congress at the same time issued a letter, drawn up with great 
art aud dexterity, to the king, to the English people, to the inhabit- 
ants of Canada, &c, wherein it was shown, in the most convincing 
manner, that the Americans only sought to defend their native and 
acquired rights against the despotism and arbitrary enactments of 
the English government and parliament. This address made the 
greatest impression, and dvcw the attention of all Europe to the 
country where simple and peaceable men defended then freedom and 
natural rights with the greatest discretion and resolution against 
force and superior power. The English declared Massachusetts in 



THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 331 

rebellion ; but, in the first two encounters at Lexington 
and Bunker' s-hill they suffered so much loss, that, al- 
though the victors, they considered it expedient to leave Boston. 
For this result the Americans had to thank their magnanimous 
fellow-citizen, Washington, who devoted his energy and abilities to 
the lofty object of liberating his country. "Whilst he was employing 
his sword in the field, Benjamin Franklin, the sometime printer, 
celebrated as the discoverer of the lightning-rod, and as the composer 
and disseminator of useful popular books, was busied as the ambas- 
sador of his country, both in speech and writing, at the courts of 
London and Paris. The appearance of this plain, sensible man, in 
his simple Quaker habit and natural white hair, produced such an 
enthusiasm for freedom and democracy in the excitable capital of 
Paris, that the young and rich marquis of Lafayette and other simi- 
larly-disposed noblemen crossed the sea, with a noble enthusiasm to 
hazard life and property in the cause of American freedom. Germans 
also, as Kalb, Steuben, &c, the Pole, Kosciusko, and a great number 
of volunteers of all nations, went to the aid of the Americans. 
Encouraged by this, the deputies of the thirteen United States 
declared the independence of the American colonies of England. But 
despite this sympathy, and despite the efforts of the noble leader of 
the young State, it seemed that the Americans must nevertheless 
yield when the English government concluded treaties with several 
German princes, in consequence of which numerous Hessians, 
Hanoverians, Waldeckers, and other Germans, who were collected 
together by crafty recruiting officers, and sold to England for money, 
went over to the New World to prove their European tactics on the 
free sons of America. The English generals in New York and 
Canada now made victorious progress, and even took possession of 
Philadelphia ; but the circumspection and knowledge of the country 
possessed by the vigdant Washington, who made use of every advan- 
tage, prevented any great results ; and when, at length, the capitula- 
October 15, lation of Saratoga took place, by which 7000 English 
1777- troops laid down their arms, the war took a turn that 

promised a successful issue for the Americans. 

§ 456. The news of the capitulation of Saratoga was received in 
France with rejoicing, and was the cause that the French government, 
February 6, hurried away by public opinion, concluded an alliance 
1778. with the Congress, in which it recognized the independ- 

ence of North America, and promised its assistance tdl this independ- 
ence should be firmly estabbshed. Supported by France with money, 
ships, and troops, and by many volunteers distinguished by birth, 
wealth, and education, the Americans could now undertake the war 
with England with greater confidence ; and, though the young repub- 



332 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

lie had still many dangers to overcome, and many calamities to 
undergo ; though there were still the sufferings of war, want of 
money, and treachery, to he home with, the final victory was no 
June 2G longer doubtful, when Spain also united herself to the 

1779- American alliance. The war was now carried on princi- 

pally in the southern states of North America, where there were still 
many adherents of the English monarchy to he found. But, as the 
struggle went on simultaneously in several places both by land and 
water, and the enemies of England became more numerous with every 
year, the operations in America were gradually relaxed. Not only 
did the French and Spanish fleets attack the English ships in the 
"West Indian seas, in the Atlantic Ocean, and in the Mediterranean ; 
hut the Dutch were also involved in the war against England, just as 
they were ahout to join the armed neutrality. 

For the purpose of checking the superiority of the British, who, 
during the war, disturbed free maritime trade, ruled over every sea by 
their privateers, and molested the ships of every country by an 
oppressive search for contraband wares, Catherine II. concluded 
an alliance with the several naval powers, by which the motto, 
" Neutral ship, neutral goods," should be maintained, and the 
trade of the neutral states on the coasts and in the harbours of the 
belligerent powers secured. This neutral alliance was gradually 
joined by Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, Naples, and 
Portugal ; but Holland, whose adherence Avould have been extremely 
important, from her situation and maritime power, hesitated so long, 
that England got information of the project, and hastened to declare 
November, war against the Dutch before the latter could convey their 
1780. declaration of adhesion to St. Petersburg. Holland thus 

disappeared from the list of neutral powers, and, consequently, was 
unable to join the alliance. 

§ 457. Never was England's empire of the sea more endangered 
than now. But that which was devised for the destruction of these 
haughty islanders proved, in some degree, the means of their glory. 
Holland, where the hereditary Stadtholder, "William V., and his 
former guardian and constant adviser, Ernest of Brunswick, were 
entirely devoted to the English, whilst the aristocracy, from regard 
to the interests of commerce, were in alliance with the French, was 
injured in its trade, in its navigation, and in its colonies, by this war ; 
the united fleets of France and Spain were repeatedly defeated by the 
English admiral, Rodney ; and Catherine of Russia withdrew from 
the neutral alliance, which was in consequence shortly dissolved. It 
was only in America that the fortune of the war was adverse to 
England. The gallant general Cornwallis was shut up near York- 
town by the French-xlmerican army in such a manner that he was 



THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. S33 

October 19, obliged to surrender with the whole of his forces. On 
!7 81 - the other hand, the siege of Gibraltar, upon which the 

a.d. 1782. ejes f a \\ Europe were directed, terminated in the defeat 
of the enemies of England, and covered the commandant, Elliot, and 
his troops, who were mostly Hanoverians, with eternal renown. 

The strong town of Gibraltar, which had passed into the possession 
of the English during the Spanish war of succession, had been long 
blockaded on land by French and Spanish troops, and was now to be 
September, attacked from the sea also, by means of " floating bat- 
1782. teries." This invention, which was made by the French 

engineer, D'Arcon, consisted in this : — A number of dismasted ships 
were covered with a sloping roof of wet hides, so that the citadel 
could be approached without danger. But this undertaking, which 
was conducted at an enormous expense, soon proved an entire failure. 
The floating batteries, with their covering of hides, were set on fire 
and destroyed by red-hot cannon-balls, and the whole scheme frus- 
trated. Gibraltar remained in possession of the English. 

§ 458. In the mean time, the members of the opposition, Fox, 
Burke, and Sheridan, had succeeded to the ministry. These men 
were more disposed to a friendly arrangement with America on the 
basis of the independence of the United States, than then- predeces- 
November, sors had been. Shortly after the siege of Gibraltar, 
1782. negotiations were entered into, which, in the following- 

year, resulted in the peace of Versailles. In this, the independence 
of the North American Republic was acknowledged, and the mutual 
claims of the other belligerent power composed by the surrender or 
return of the conquered towns and islands. Holland suffered the 
greatest losses. The unfortunate war had inflicted wounds upon her 
trade and naval power from which they never recovered. Besides the 
irreparable losses incurred by the East and "West Indian trading com- 
panies, the Dutch possessions in the East Indies also suffered a dimi- 
nution. Since that time Holland has entered into more intimate 
relations with France ; but her people excited by the notions of 
republicanism and democratic freedom, which, since the American 
war, had spread over Europe, gave vent to the animosity they felt 
against their government, which was favourably disposed towards 
, _„ , England, by an insurrection : Duke Ernest of Brunswick 

A.D. 1784. ° . ' J 

was obliged to leave the country, the Stadtholder and his 
wife were threatened, insurrections of armed mobs took place in some 
of the towns. At length, Frederick "William II. of Prussia, brother 
of the hereditary female Stadtholder, marched troops into Holland. 
,_„_ These quickly put an end to the insurrection, and again 
restored order. America alone gained any thing by the 
war. After many contests respecting the nature of the government, 
the "United States" at length agreed that the supreme government 



334 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

of the confederation should consist of the Congress, and a President, 
,-„.. who was to be elected every four years. The iudicial 

A.D. ]/8f}. .'line i 

power rests m the hands of a supreme court and a number 
of provincial courts with juries. Every individual state had a free 
and independent government for the management of its internal 
affairs ; and religious freedom, without any state Church, is pre- 
dominant every where. The president has the supreme command 
over the sea and land forces, and appoints all officials. The estimable 
"Washington filled this honourable post for eight years. Franklin 
died, universally lamented, in 1790, in Ins 84th year. 

3. INNOVATIONS OF PKINCES AND MINISTEBS. 

§ 459. The French illuminative philosophy and the Parisian spirit 
of the age, exercised the greatest influence upon the views and mea- 
sures of princes and governments. Not only were all the productions 
of French literature eagerly read and admired in the higher circles of 
Europe, but it also became the fashion for the well-born youth to 
spend some time in Paris to complete their education, and no man of 
consequence could reckon upon consideration or regard if he had not 
been admitted into the intellectual circles of the French capital. All 
the princes and statesmen of Europe strove for the favour and 
friendship of the French literati and philosophers ; is it then to be 
wondered at, that in the three last decenniums which preceded the 
French Revolution many reforms and innovations were undertaken, 
which had their origin in that spirit of the times which had been 
formed in France ? It was sought to apply practically that which in 
speech and in writing was allowed to be the truth. Zealous eftbrts 
were accordingly displayed on all sides to revolutionize ancient forms 
and arrangements, laws and customs, and to force them by fresh 
adjustments to the spirit of the age. In the region of religion and 
the Church, this spirit first displayed itself in the establishment of the 
liberal and magnanimous principle of toleration in matters of faith, in 
the abolition of the order of the Jesuits and of the inquisition, and 
in the moderation of all principles and arrangements dangerous to 
philanthropy or the rights of mankind. This new epoch of humanity 
exhibited itself most actively and with the best residts, in the affairs 
of law, where efforts were every where made to establish, as far as 
possible, the equal administration of justice to every man, and to ame- 
liorate or abolish the statutes and burdens which had descended from 
the middle ages. In many countries serfdom was abolished, socage 
duties were done away with, oppressive or degrading relations removed ; 
new codes and ordinances respecting the administration of justice 
annulled the cruel punishments of a stern and gloomy period, as the 
rack, wheel, &c, and conferred the privileges of humanity even on 
the criminal. In regard to the economy of the state, new principles 



INNOVATIONS OF PRINCES AND MINISTERS. 335 

were established in Prance, which were adopted in many countries. 
According to these, money is the lever of state science, and, conse- 
quently, the great object is to raise as large a revenue as possible by 
labour and by making use of natural powers. If this principle, on 
the one hand, was the occasion of the encouragement of agriculture, 
mining, and planting, and that trade, industry, and useful inventions 
were patronised, it led, on the other, to oppressive duties, to the royal 
right of pre-emption, to indirect taxation, and to paper money. 

§ 460. The first who reorganized the relations of the state upon 
Pombal these principles was Pombal, in Portugal, the all-powerful 

Portugal minister of Joseph Emanuel. An attempt to murder the 

EmanueTTo ki n S> which was ascribed to the powerful family of Tavora 
1750—1777- and the instigations of the Jesuits, was made use of to 
a.d. 1759. drive the members of this order out of Portugal, and 
afterwards to effect the enlightenment of the people by new semi- 
naries of education and by the diffusion of printed books. The per- 
vading activity of this powerful man was felt hi every quarter. He 
had the affairs of the army and those relating to war placed on a 
better footing by the German marshal William, of Lippe-Schaumburg ; 
he encouraged agriculture and industry to draw the people from dirt 
and indolence ; and when a fearful earthquake destroyed 30,000 
November houses in Lisbon, he was indefatigable in repairing the 
1755. mischief. Pombal united the severity and arbitrariness 

of a despot to the courage and the penetrating will of a reformer. 
All the prisons were filled with those who opposed him. When 
these regained their liberty under the reign of the weak Maria, they 
united themselves for the overthrow of the minister, after which, 
Portugal was again plunged into the same wretched state as formerly. 
„ . In Spain, similar attempts were made to reorganize the 

Charles III., affairs of Church and state by liberal ministers, like 
a.d. 1759— Aranda and others. When the Jesuits opposed these in- 
novations, Aranda ordered 5000 of them to be arrested in 
a single night, embarked on board ships, without distinction of age or 
rank, and carried off like criminals, with great harshness, to the States 
of the Church. Their property was confiscated and their establish- 
ments closed. During the latter years of the reign of Charles III., 
however, the clergy and inquisition again acquired great influence, 
and destroyed or disturbed the greater number of the innovations. 
France, In Prance, the minister Choiseul belonged to the pro- 

Choiseul. moters of enlightenment and progress ; but under the 
government of a voluptuous king, like Louis XV., no improvement 
could take place. After the ascension of the throne by Louis XVI., 
two men were called to the ministry who possessed both the power 
and the will to heal the shattered constitution of the state by 



S36 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Turcot and effectual reforms — Tiirgot arid Malasherbes. They pro- 
Malasherbes, posed that a new mode of taxation should be intro- 
a.d. 17/0. cluced, that the nobility and clergy should bear their 
share of the burdens of the state, and that the arrangements of the 
middle ages should be modified so as to suit the present times. Civil 
legal equality, without regard to person, rank, or religiou, was to be 
everywhere maintained; but their plans were shipwrecked by the selfish- 
ness of the nobles and the clergy, and by the blindness of the court. 
§ 461. Similar attempts at reform were made about the same time 
Denmark, hi the North and East of Europe. Iu Denmark, under 
Struensee, the imbecile king, Christian VIL, the German physician, 
a..d. 1766— ' Struensee, arrived at the dignity of count of the empire 
1808. and prime minister, by the aid of the queen, Caroline 

Matilda, a daughter of the royal house of England. Furnished 
with unheard-of powers, so that all orders signed by him and pro- 
vided with the seal of the cabinet, possessed the same validity as if 
the king himself had subscribed them, Struensee adopted a multi- 
tude of arrangements, in the spirit of the age, for the relief of the 
citizen and peasant classes, for the curtailment of the power of the 
nobility, and for the improvement of the proceedings of justice. A 
man without remarkable qualities, without strength of character, 
without courage, and without resolution, he soon laid himself open in 
such a way that his fall was readily accomplished. His confidential 
relations with the high-minded although imprudent queen received 
an unfavourable interpretation ; he offended the national feeling of 
the Danes by his use of the German language in all official proclama- 
tions ; and by the want of courage he displayed on the occasion of a 
trilling tumult among the military and sailors, he rendered himself 
contemptible, and inspired his opponents with confidence. Whfist 
the minister was at a ball, Juliana, Christian's stepmother, pressed 
into the king's bedchamber with some of her confidants, and, by her 
description of the dangers that were threatening, induced him to sign 
a number of orders of arrest that were already prepared. Upon this, 
Struensee and his friend Brandt were committed to prison, and, after 
a most iniquitously conducted trial, punished, the one by being be- 
August 28, headed, the other by the loss of his right hand. Caroline 
1772. Matilda, betrayed by the weakness of Struensee, was 

separated from the king, and died, after three years of wretchedness, 
in Celle. After the death of Struensee, Juliana took 
possession of the government, and ordered, through her 
favourite G-uldberg, all the offensive innovations to be repealed. But 
when the Crown Prince, Frederick, came of age, he conducted the 
government iu his father's name, and made over the conduct of the 
ministry to the gallant Bernstorf. 



INNOVATIONS OF PRINCES AND MINISTERS. 337 

§ 462. In Sweden, the power of the aristocracy attained its full 
„ , development under the reign of the good-natured king, 

Ad If F d Adolf Frederick. The council of state, which had the 
rick, a.d. management of every thing, consisted of men without 
1757—1771- either honour or patriotism, who sold themselves to foreign 
powers, and served the interests of those states from which they drew 
the largest sums of money ; the honour and well-being of the country 
was a point they never considered. Two parties, called " Hats " and 
" Caps," the former in the pay of Prance, the latter in that of Bussia, 
hated and persecuted each other even unto bloodshed, and made the 
Diet the scene of their hostile attacks. The king possessed neither 
power nor respect. This state of things came to an end, when, after 
Gustavus III. * ne death of Adolf Frederick, the adroit and popular Gfus- 
a.d. 1771 — tavus III. ascended the throne. Brave, chivalrous, and 
eloquent, he easily gained over the Swedish army and 
people to his side, and then compelled the state council, after he had 
surrounded their house of assembly with troops, to consent to the 
alterations in the government. By this bloodless revolution the exe- 
cutive power was restored to the crown, and the council of state 
reduced within the bounds of a deliberative assembly. The disposi- 
tion of the land and sea forces, and the appointment of state and 
military officers, were in the hands of the king. He was to collect 
the votes of the Estates before levying a tax, declaring war, or con- 
cluding a peace. But after a few years, he freed himself from this 
restraint also, by an exercise of power, and, at the same time, gave 
absolute authority to the throne. Endowed with many talents and 
kingly qualities, Gfustavus III. took advantage of his lofty position 
to introduce many reforms and arrangements in the government and 
administration of justice, which contributed to the welfare of his 
people, and were in accordance with the spirit of the times. But 
many of his creations were the result of a love of magnificence, a 
desire to imitate Erench fashions, and an attachment to the departed 
times of chivalry. The founding of an academy upon the Erench 
model, the erection of theatres and opera houses, the revival of tour- 
naments and running at the ring, occasioned great expenses to the 
impoverished country. The king's unseasonable dreams of heroism, 
and his chivalrous whims, gave a distorted turn to his activity. "When 
he declared that the distillation of brandy was a privilege of royalty, 
and compelled the Swedes to buy their accustomed beverage, which 
hitherto almost every family had prepared for itself, for a high price 
at the royal distilleries, and when he undertook a useless and expen- 
. _ 00 sive war, both by sea and land, with Bussia, the affection 

A.D. 1788. . ' J ' ' 

of his people gradually decayed; and when, at length, 
before the former wounds had ceased to bleed, he medi- 
tated a war with Erance, for the purpose of opposing the Bevolution 

z 



338 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

and saving the crown of Louis XVI., a conspiracy was formed, in 
March 29 consequence of which Gustavus III. was shot at a masked 
1792. ball, by Ankarstrom, a former officer of the guard. 

§ 463. In Austria, Maria Theresa, in conjunction with 

the enlightened minister, Kaunitz, was the first to abolish 
many ahuses, and to introduce many timely alterations. The affairs of 
the army and of war were reorganized, the administration of justice was 
in every way improved ; new seminaries of education were established, 
and the economy of the state properly arranged. But she proceeded 
with prudence and discretion, and treated with forbearance not only 
the national faith, but the national rights, and the established usages 
y , tj and customs. Not so her son Joseph II. Scarcely had 
a.d. 1780— he become the absolute ruler of the vast Austrian empire 
1790. before he undertook a series of reforms which offended 

the clergy and the zealous friends of the Church, prejudiced the pri- 
vileged nobdity, and outraged the national feelings of the subjects of 
the imperial house. He first introduced religious toleration, and af- 
forded the adherents of the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Greek Churches 
the free exercise of their religion and equal civil and political rights 
with the Catholics ; he then diminished the number of monasteries, 
and applied the property of the Church which was thus obtained to the 
improvement of schools, and to the erection of establishments of gene- 
ral utility ; he limited pilgrimages and processions, and embarrassed the 
communication and intercourse of the clergy with Boine. It was in 
vain that pope Pius VI. endeavoured to bring the emperor to a dif- 
ferent course by the unexampled proceeding of a journey to Vienna. 
Joseph received him with the greatest respect, but remained firm to his 
purpose. Not less fertile of residts were his reforms in civil and po- 
litical matters. He established personal freedom by the abolition of serf- 
dom, and civd legal equality by the introduction of an equitable system 
of taxation and of equality in the eye of the law without regard to rank 
or person. Joseph II. had the noblest intentions in these innovations ; 
but he proceeded with too great haste, had too little regard to exist- 
ing relations, customs, and prejudices, and did not allow the seed the 
necessary time to ripen. He thus placed in the hands of the oppo- 
nents of progress the means of throwing suspicion upon his actions 
and efforts, and of depriving his intentions, which were calculated for 
the happiness of mankind, of all their fruits. "When he attempted to 
introduce his reforms into the Austrian Netherlands also, established 
a new high court of justice in Brussels, and commenced the reorgani- 
zation of the university of Louvain, which was under the guidance of 
the clergy, disturbances arose that at length terminated in a universal 

rebellion. The Nctherlanders refused the taxes, drove the 
a.d. 7 7- Austrian regency along with the weak garrison out of 
the country, and declared in a congress the independence of the 



INNOVATIONS OF PRINCES AND MINISTERS. 339 

Netherlands. This event, which had been brought about 
by the nobility and clergy, and similar occurrences in 
February 20, Hungary, broke the heart of the irritable emperor, and 
!790. hastened his death, the seeds of which he had imbibed in 

the unhealthy lands of the Damibe, during the Turkish wars, when he 
was the ally of Russia (§ 468). Joseph's indefatigable exertions, and 
the activity with which he superintended every thing himself, the 
freedom with which he admitted both high and low to his presence, 
and his abolition of the tyranny of officials, met with no appreciation ; 
his views were misunderstood and misrepresented, his noblest plans 
were frustrated, and his name calumniated. But posterity, which 
can appreciate more justly his intentions and his efforts, will ever 
Leopold II bless his memory. His brother and successor, Leopold 
a.d. 1790— II., restored most of the ancient usages, and thus brought 
' back peace in Belgium and Hungary. 

Russia § 464. Even uncivilized Russia felt the influence of 

Catherine II. ^ ne s pi r it of the age under the long and splendid reign 
a.d. 1762 — of Catherine II. The empress possessed great talents 
for government, and a susceptible mind ; she main- 
tained a correspondence with Voltaire and others of similar sen- 
timents, invited Diderot to St. Petersburg, and encouraged sciences 
and arts. She improved the administration of justice, founded schools 
and academies, and adopted many arrangements that gave an air of 
civilization to the country, and which were loudly applauded by the 
French authors. But the greater part was mere illusion ; the cele- 
brated journey of the empress to Tauris, during which, artificial vil- 
lages, shepherds and their flocks driven to the spot, and country fes- 
tivals along the road, were to produce the belief that the land was 
blooming and prosperous, is an image of her whole reign. As re- 
gards the private life of the empress and her court, the same immo- 
rality, dissoluteness, and luxury, reigned in St. Petersburg, as in 
Paris. After Gregor Orloff, to whom the voluptuous empress had 
surrendered both her person and her empire in return for the share 
he had taken in the murder of her husband (§ 444), followed a suc- 
cession of other paramours who were all loaded with wealth and 
honours. The situation of the favoured lover of the empress was at 
length disposed of like a court-office. No one, however, enjoyed her 
favour so long as Potemkin the Taurian. For a space of sixteen 
years he conducted the affairs of government and the plans of con- 
Potemkin, quest, lived during the whole of the time in a state of 
a.d. 1791. magnificence that bordered on the fabulous, and displayed 
the wealth that was showered upon him by his liberal mistress in a 
manner truly remarkable. It was only a man with a spirit of enter- 
prise so daring as to spare neither money nor human life, who, in the 
eyes of the empress, was capable of giving the befitting glory and 

z2 



3-[0 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

renown to her government. The rebellion of Pugatscheff, a Don 
Cossack, who called himself Peter III., and who found 
many adherents in the neighbourhood of the Volga, was 
speedily suppressed. Pugatscheff, betrayed by his bosom 
friend, was beheaded in Moscow, and his body cut to 

pieces. 

4. THE PARTITIONS OF POLAND, AIsT) RUSSIA'S WAP WITH 
THE TURKS. 

§ 465. The kingdom of Poland had long been a rotten structure, 
which was only preserved upright by the divisions and jealousies of 
the neighbouring states, and not by its own strength. The elective 
constitution was the misfortune of the country ; every vacancy of the 
throne produced the most violent contests, by which the nation was 
divided into parties, bribery and corruption became predominant, and 
the nobles attained such privileges as were inconsistent with any well 
organized state policy. The throne was powerless ; the Diet, from 
which "Republican Poland" received her laws, is become proverbial 
from the vehement party contests that rendered every debate fruit- 
less ; the whole power was placed in the hands of the armed confede- 
ration. A kingdom, where it was only the noble who possessed 
liberty or the privilege of bearing arms, and who, relying upon his 
sword, despised the law, where enslaved peasants were held in a con- 
dition of serfdom, where trade and commerce, which in other lands 
were carried on by a cultivated class of citizens, was in the hands of 
sordid and avaricious Jews, must needs have excited the cupidity of 
ambitious neighbours. 

Augustus III., After the death of Augustus III. the Polish empire 
a.d. 17C3. again became the prey of the old elective tempests, till at 
length, Stanislaus Poniatowski, one of the former lovers of the em- 
press, Catherine II., was chosen king in the plain of "Wola, amidst 
Se t b 4 ^ ne c ^ asn °f Russian sabres. Poniatowski was a connoi- 
1764. sieur and patron of literature and the arts, and an amiable 

Poniatowski, and accomplished gentleman, but without strength of 
jAq - 5 character or power of will. Weak, and with no consis- 

tency of character, he was a mere tennis-ball in the hands 
of the powerful. The Russian ambassador in Warsaw possessed 
greater power than he did ; and, to prevent the possibility of Poland's 
escape from this state of disorder and feebleness, Russia and Prussia 
determined upon maintaining the ancient constitution unaltered. 

§ 4G6. It happened at this crisis, that the Polish Dissidents, under 
which term were included, not only the Protestants and Socinians, 
but also the adherents of the Greek Church, petitioned the Diet for 
the restoration of the ecclesiastical and civil privileges of which they 
had been deprived by the Jesuits. Their petition, although sup- 



WAR OF RUSSIA WITH THE TURKS. 341 

ported by Russia, Prussia, and most of the Protestant governments, 
was rejected at the Diet by the Catholic nobility, at the instigation 
of the clergy. The Dissidents, in combination with the " discon- 
July 23, tented," now formed the General Confederation of Ba- 

176*7- dom, called upon Eussia for assistance, and extorted the 

free exercise of religion, admission to offices, and the churches they 
had before possessed, from the Diet. Surrounded by Russian troops, 
the representatives subscribed, under the portrait of the empress, the 
act of toleration, that was greeted by all Europe, and which was the 
sign of the impotence of Poland. That this impotence might be 
permanent, it was decided that no change should be made in the 
existing constitution without the consent of Eussia. 

The proceedings offended the national feeling of the Polish patriots 
and aroused the religious hatred of the Catholic zealots. The anti- 
February 28, confederation of Bar was formed, which was to free the 
1768. Poles from Eussian supremacy, and to wrest from the 

Dissidents the rights that had been conceded them. France supported 
it with money and officers. A furious war now arose between the 
two confederations. But the Eussian army, which had remained in 
the country for the protection of the Diet and the Dissidents, carried 
off the victory. Bar and Cracow, the chief strongholds of the enemy, 
were stormed, and themselves compelled to take refuge in the Turkish 
dominions. The Eussians followed them over the borders, and did 
not refrain from murdering, plundering, and devastating even on the 
foreign soil. 

§ 467. This infringement of territory induced the Porte, which 
was urged on by the French ambassadors, to declare hostilities 
First Turkish against Eussia, whereupon the Turkish war burst forth, 
War, a.d. which for six years fearfully convulsed the east of 
1768—1774. Europe both by land and sea. "Whilst Eomanzoff, after 
two bloody encounters, was conquering Moldavia and Wallachia, and 
the dreadful storm of Bender was filling all Europe with astonish- 
ment, the Morea, where the Greeks, relying upon the assistance of 
Eussia, had risen against the rule of the Turks, was horribly ravaged 
with fire and sword by the latter, so that whole districts were covered 
with ruins and corpses ; and in the haven of Tschesme, opposite the 
island of Chios, the whole Turkish fleet was set in flames, 
which produced a trembling of the earth in Smyrna, and 
caused an agitation of the sea like that produced by a storm. At 
the same time, Moscow and its neighbourhood were visited by a deso- 
lating pestilence, and in Poland the civil war still raged 
with increasing fury. It was only by a miracle that 
Poniatowski escaped from some conspirators who wished to carry him 
off from "Warsaw. On every side the eye encountered plains soaked 



342 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

with blood, villages burnt to the ground, and weeping inhabitants. 
The impotence and divisions of Poland invited to a partition. After 
a personal interview between Frederick II. and Joseph II. (the right- 
minded Maria Theresa was hostile to the scheme), and a visit of 
August 5, prince Henry of Prussia to Petersburg, a treaty of par- 
!772. tition was arranged between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, 

hi consequence of which each of these states took possession of the 
portion of Poland which adjoined then own territories. It was in 
vain that the Diet opposed itself courageously and resolutely to the 
execution of this project, and showed that the pretended rights and 
claims which the powers insisted upon had long been given up by 
contracts, surrenders, and treaties of peace ; it was in vain that it 
solemnly protested before God and the world against such an abuse 
of superior power, and against a proceeding which outraged truth and 
good faith ; — surrounded and threatened by Russian arms, it at 
length yielded to force, and consented to the surrender of the country. 
It was thus that Polish Prussia, together with the district of the 
JSTetz, and the fertile lands of the Vistula (Elbing, Marienburg, 
Culm, &c.) became the property of Prussia ; Galieia, with the rich 
mines of Wielicza, of Austria ; and the lands on the Dwina and 
Dnieper, of Russia. The establishment of a " perpetual council," 
that was completely under Russian influence, deprived the king of the 
last remains of power. Prom this time forth the Russian ambassador 
in "Warsaw was the real governor of the Polish republic. Shortly 
after, Russia, by the peace of Kudschuck Kainardsche with the Porte, 
obtained the right of passage through the Dardanelles, and the 
protective government of Moldavia and "Wallachia, and the peninsida 
of the Crimea. 

§ 468. Russia's thirst of conquest was not satisfied with this. 
A few years afterwards, the khan of the Tatars was compelled to lay 
clown his office ; iipon which, Potemkin conquered the 
Crimea, after dreadful devastations, and united it, with 
the other lands on the Black Sea, into one territory, distinguished by 
the ancient name of Tauris. Colonists were caUed forth from Ger- 
many into the desolate steppes, the trading toAvns of Cherson and 
Odessa arose, and deceived the world by the outward appearance of 
civilization. But the happiness and prosperity of the inhabitants 
disappeared with freedom ; the once splendid city of tents degene- 
rated into a camp of gipsies ; and the houses and palaces of stone fell 
into ruins. The threatening neighbourhood of Russia was a cause of 
Second Turk- aux i e ty t° the Porte. Before long, a second furious war 
ish War, a.d. broke out, by land and sea, between Russia and Turkey. 
17«7 17U2. -g u £ ^ 9 time also victory accompanied the Russian army 
and its dreadful leader. In the midst of winter, Potemkin stormed 



THE PARTITIONS OF POLAND. 343 

December 17, the strong city of Oczakow, after lie had filled the trenches 
1 788. with, blood and dead bodies ; and the brave Suwaroff took 

the fortress of Ismael under circumstances of similar horror. The 
December 22, road to Constantinople now stood open to the Russians, 
1790. an( j the name of Catherine's second grandchild, " Con- 

stantine," was supposed to indicate the secret intention of the empress 
to introduce a Christian prince into the Byzantine capital. This love 
of conquest displayed by Russia occasioned uneasiness to the other 
states. England and Prussia assumed a threatening aspect ; Grus- 
tavus III. of Sweden attacked the Russians by sea and land (§ 462) ; 
and Poland thought that the favourable moment was arrived for 
withdrawing herself from the dictatorial influence of Russia, and for 
again regaining her political independence. In alliance with Prussia, 
the Poles dissolved the perpetual council, turned the elective empire 
into an hereditary monarchy, gave themselves a constitu- 
k ' tional government with two chambers, and a stricter 

separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. 

§ 469. This constitution, appropriate to the age, and the work of 
patriotically-disposed men, was received with applause by the whole of 
Europe. The king swore to observe it. Erederick William II. 
expressed his favourable wishes : even Catherine concealed her vexa- 
tion. A new spirit seemed . to have taken possession of the nation. 
But party-spirit and selfishness destroyed the good work. Many of 
the nobles were discontented with the change ; a party was formed 
for the preservation of Polish " liberty," as they, in their delusion, 
called the ancient system, and invoked the aid of the empress. The latter 
had just concluded the peace of Jassy with the Porte, and embraced 
with avidity the opportunity of marching her army upon the frontiers. 
January, Trusting to this assistance, the Russian party formed the 

1792. confederation of Targowicz for the restoration of the old 

May 14 constitution. A Russian army soon stood in the heart of 

1792. Poland. In vain the patriots called upon Prussia for 

assistance ; opinions had changed in Berlin ; an alliance with Russia 
was preferred to the friendship of Poland, more particularly as an 
imitation of the new Erench ideas and forms of government was 
detected in the new constitution. Nevertheless, the Poles did not 
despair of their righteous cause. Kosciusko, a brave soldier, who had 
fought in the cause of freedom under Washington in America, placed 
himself at the head of the patriots, and encountered the superior 
July 17, force of the Russians at Dubienka. But party-spirit, dis- 

1792. sension, treachery, and want of system, impeded every 

undertaking, and paralyzed every power. The king, hitherto an 
enthusiastic adherent of the new constitution, soon fell into his old 
irresolution and faint-heartedness, and allowed himself to be so terri- 



3 14 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

fied by a threatening letter of the empress, that he joined the alliance 
of Targowicz, and renounced all further hostilities. The gallant 
warriors laid down the sword in wrath, and left their homes to escape 
the scorn of the victors. 

But a new act of violence followed the victory. In April, Russia 
and Prussia declared that it was necessary to enclose 
Poland within narrower limits, for the purpose of stifling 
the intoxication of liberty which had penetrated into the republic 
from Prance, and to preserve the neighbouring states from every 
taint of democratic Jacobinism. It was in vain that the Diet assem- 
bled at Grodno opposed itself to this new treaty of partition. Every 
opposition gradually ceased, when Russian troops surrounded the 
house of assembly, and violently carried off the boldest speakers. 
July 22 • Thus followed the second division of Poland, by which 
October u, Russia obtained the most important of the eastern dis- 

1 70S • ... 

tricts (Lithuania, Little Poland, Volhynia, Podolia, 
Ukraine) ; Prussia gained possession of Great Poland, along with 
Dantzic and Thorn. The republic of Poland retained scarce a third 
of her former territory. 

§ 470. The partitioned land was occupied by Russian and Prussian 
troops; and Catherine's ambassador, the coarse and brutal Igelstrom, 
ruled with pride and insolence in "Warsaw. The national spirit of 
Poland was once more aroused. A secret conspiracy was formed 
which extended its branches over the whole country. Kosciusko and 
the emigrant patriots returned, and placed themselves at the head of the 
movement, the central point of which was Cracow. It was from this 
point that Kosciusko, who had been named the absolute chief of the 
national force, issued a summons to the people, in which he repre- 
sented the restoration of the freedom and independence of the coun- 
try, the reconquest of the separated territories, and the introduction 
April 17, of a constitutional government, as the objects of the 
17 94. struggle. The insurrection quickly extended itself to the 

capital. The Russian garrison in Warsaw was attacked on Maundy- 
Thursday, and either cut to pieces or made prisoners. Igelstrom' s 
palace was destroyed by fire ; four of the most illustrious adherents 
of Russia died upon the gallows. The provinces followed the example 
of the capital; the king approved the revolt of the misused ration; 
and every thing promised a successful issue. The Prussians, who had 
marched into the neighbourhood of Warsaw, were compelled to a 
hasty and disastrous retreat by the brave generals Kosciusko, Dom- 
browski, and Joseph Poniatowski (the nephew of the king). But 
the success of the Poles increased the enemy's desire of vengeance. 
Catherine, with the consent of Austria and Prussia, sent her most 
redoubted general, Suwaroff, into Poland. Kosciusko was obliged to 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 345 

yield to the superior strength of his opponent. After an unsuccess- 
ful engagement he fell, wounded, from his horse, with the exclama- 
October 10 tion, " the end of Poland ! " and was carried off a prisoner. 
1794. On the 4th Novemher the suburb, Praga, was stormed 

by Suwaroff; 12,000 defenceless people were either slain or drowned 
in the Vistula. The shrieks of the slaughtered terrified the inhabit- 
ants of the capital, and made them willing to surrender. On the 
9th November Suwaroff made his splendid entry into Warsaw as a 
conqueror. Pouiatowski was obliged to surrender the crown. He 
lived in St. Petersburg, on an annuity, till his death in 1798, an ob- 
._ ject of deserved contempt. A few months later, the 
' three powers declared, that out of love for peace and the 
welfare of their subjects, they had decided upon the partition of the 
whole republic of Poland. Accordingly the south, with Cracow, went 
to Austria; the land on the left of the Vistula with the capital, 
"Warsaw, to Prussia ; Russia took possession of all the rest. Thus 
the once renowned and powerful Poland disappeared from the ranks 
of independent states, a victim to a weakness for which she was 
indebted to herself, and a violence that despised the rights of foreign 
nations. Kosciusko, after being set at liberty by Paul I., died as a 
private man in Switzerland (October, 1817). His dead body was 
conveyed to Cracow. 



B. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

1. THE LAST DATS OF ABSOLUTE MOFAECHT. 

Louis XV., § 471. Louis XV. at first possessed the affections of 

a.d. 1774. his people to such a degree, that he was named the 
" Much-beloved ;" and when he was attacked by a dangerous ill- 
ness in Metz, the whole land went into mourning, and his recovery 
was celebrated by the greatest rejoicings. But this love gradually 
changed into hatred and contempt when the king gave himself up to 
the most shameless debaucheries, and surrendered the government of 
the country, the command of the army, and the decision upon points 
of law and state policy, to the companions of his orgies and the 
ministers of his lusts and pleasures, and when mistresses without 
morals or decency ruled the court and the empire. Among these 
women, none possessed greater or more enduring influence than the 
Marchioness of Pompadour (1764), who guided the whole policy of 
Prance for a period of twenty years, filled the most important offices 
with her favourites, decided upon peace or war, and disposed of the 
revenues of the state as she did of her private purse, so that after a 
life passed in luxury and splendour she left millions behind her. 



346 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

She and her creatures encouraged Louis' excesses and love of plea- 
sure, that he might plunge continually deeper in the pool of vice, and 
leave to them the government of the state. For the rest, the Pompadour 
used her position and her influence with a certain dignity, and with 
tact and discretion ; but when the countess Dubarry, a woman from 
the very dregs of the people, occupied her place, the court lost all 
authority and respect. 

§ 472. This reign of lust and extravagance, together with the use- 
less and costly wars in Germany, exhausted the treasury and increased 
the burden of debts and taxation. And as all these taxes and imposts 
pressed entirely upon the citizen and peasant class, whilst the wealthy 
nobility and the clergy enjoyed an exemption, the man of moderate 
means was very heavily burdened, especially as the government did 
not superintend their collection, but left it in the hands of the 
farmers-general of the revenue and of their blood-sucking subordinates. 
The land and property-tax, the capitation-tax, the house-tax, the 
tolls and duties upon salt, wrested from the lower classes, who, in 
addition, had to pay tithes, socage-dues, and other feudal taxes to 
their landlords, the fruits of their industry, and prevented the rise of 
a prosperous middle class. It was now the custom that all laws and 
ordinances relating to taxes should be registered in the parliament of 
Paris ; hence it followed, that in default of the States- General, 
which since 1614 had no more been summoned, the validity of taxes 
and orders depended upon its sanction ; and that it also possessed 
the right of opposing the laws and edicts relating to taxes by refusing 
then registration. This produced a violent contest between the 
parliament and government at every new tax, which was usually 
terminated by the king holding a "bed of justice" and overpowering 
resistance. Beside the tax edicts, the arbitrary lettres de cachet were 
another source of contention between the court and the parliament. 
These terrible letters, which were easily to be obtained by any one 
possessing any influence at court, were a despotic attack upon the 
liberty of the person, inasmuch, as by their means, any one might be 
arrested and imprisoned without a hearing. For ten years did the 
parliament struggle against the court and government, till Louis XV., 
weary of the perpetual opposition, at length gave a new direction to 
.__. the matter, and ordered the members of the opposition to 
be arrested. But they again assumed the same attitude 
under his successor. 

§ 473. "When Louis XV., in consequence of his excesses, was 
carried off" in the midst of his sins by a frightful distemper, the trea- 
sury was exhausted, the country in debt, credit gone, and the people 
Louis XVI. heavily oppressed by their burdens. It was under these 
a.d. 1774 — melancholy circumstances, that an absolute throne de- 
scended to a prince who certainly possessed the best of 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 347 

hearts but a weak understanding ; who was good-natured enough to 
wish to relieve the condition of the people, but who possessed neither 
strength nor intellect for efficient measures. This prince was Louis 
XVI. Weak and indulgent, he allowed the frivolity and extrava- 
gance of his brothers, the count of Provence (afterwards Louis 
XVIII.), and the count of Artois (Charles X.) ; and permitted his 
wife, Marie Antoinette, the highly-accomplished daughter of Maria 
Theresa, to interfere in matters of state, and to exert a considerable 
influence upon the court and government. The queen, by her pride 
and haughty bearing, incurred the dislike of the people, so that they 
ascribed every unpopular measure to her influence, and put a bad 
construction upon every liberty she allowed herself in private. Even 
in the celebrated story of the necklace, in which some swindler made 
use of her name to gain possession of a splendid ornament, many 
believed her participation in the guilt. 

The prevailing want of money, and the disordered state of the 
revenue, could only be remedied by including the nobility and clergy 
in the taxation, by large reforms in the whole system of government, 
like those proposed by Turgot and Malasherbes (§ 460), and by order 
and economy in the expenditure. But Louis XYI. had neither 
strength nor resolution to carry out such decisive measures ; and as 
for economy, the extravagant court of Versailles would not listen to it. 
Necker's first -^ ne G-enevese banker, JN"ecker, who undertook the ma- 
ministry, a.d. nagement of the finances after Turgot, was as little in a - 
1771 1/81. p OS ition as his predecessor to reduce the disorder in the 
state economy ; and when, upon the occasion of a loan, he exposed 
the financial condition of Trance in a pamphlet, he drew upon him- 
self the displeasure of the court and the aristocracy to such a degree, 
that he was obliged to resign his office. This happened 
at the time when the American war had increased the 
scarcitv of money, and aroused the feeling of liberty and republicanism 
in Trance. It was, therefore, a great misfortune for the Trench 
monarchy, that just at this critical moment the frivolous and extrava- 
gant Calonne undertook the management of the finances. This man 
departed from the frugal plan of Keeker, acceded to the wishes of 
the queen and the necessities of the princes and courtiers, and 
deluded the world with high-soimding promises of putting an end to 
all difficulties. The most splendid festivals were celebrated in Ver- 
sailles, and the talents of Calonne loudly extolled. But his means, 
also, were soon exhausted. He was obliged to resolve upon calling 
February, an Assembly of Xotables, consisting of nobles, clergy, 
1787- high state officials, parliamentary councillors, and a few 

representatives of the towns. They rejected the proposal of a uni- 
versal taxation, which should embrace both the nobles and clergy, 



348 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

and threatened the minister of finance with impeachment, who there- 
upon resigned his situation and proceeded to London. 

§ 474. Calonne's successor in the management of the finances, 
Lomenie de Brienne, was in a difficult position. To cover the deficit 
in the revenue he was obliged to have recourse to the usual measures, 
increasing the taxes and raising a loan, but encountered so violent an 
opposition from the parliament of Paris, that the government deter- 
mined, since the worn out method of compulsion — a royal sitting— no 

* l ,*„* longer availed, to arrest the boldest speakers and to 
August, 1 787. . ' _. . l 

banish them to Troyes. This proceeding excited a great 

commotion among the people, which induced the government to 

arrange a composition with the banished members, and to again 

sanction the assemblies. But the spirit of opposition had become 

too strong, and had already seized upon the people. They formed a 

tumultuous meeting around the House of Assembly, saluted the 

speakers of the opposition with acclamations and the government 

party Avith abuse. They burnt the detested minister of finance every 

day in effigy, and in several towns displayed the excited state of 

then minds by riotous proceedings. The cry for the States- General 

was heard in the streets as well as in parliament. It was in vain 

that the ministry attempted to overcome the opposition by converting 

the parliament into an upper court (cour pleniere) and several infe- 

„ rior courts — a new spirit had taken possession of the 

August, 1788. . _ , , i ,i . ■ . 1 • . -n- 

nation, that was at length to gain the victory. Brienne 

was compelled to resign at a time when the scarcity of money was 

become so great that all ready money payments were suspended, and 

a state bankruptcy appeared inevitable. The popular favourite, 

Necker, was a second time summoned to the ministry. 
i^cckcr's -, . . . 

second minis- He first allayed the irritation by repealing the resolutions 

try, a.d. against the parliament, and then made preparations for 

1788 1780 • • 

summoning the Estates. Owing to this, there soon arose 
a division between him and the parliament and Notables, whom he 
had again consulted. The latter were of opinion that the new as- 
sembly should conform itself, both as to the number of representatives 
and the mode of procedure, to the Estates of 1614, whilst JNecker 
wished to allow a double representation to the third Estate, and that 
they should vote individually, and not as a class ; a view that was 
supported by some of the ablest speakers of the nation in a multitude 
of pamphlets. (Abbe Sieyes : "What is the third Estate ?") Necker's 
opinion triumphed. An order of the king fixed the number of noble 
December an( l ecclesiastical members at 300 each, that of the citi- 
1788. zens at 600, and appointed the following May as the 

time of opening. Necker was the hero of the day, but he was not 
the pilot of the ship, he only " drove with the wind." 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 349 



2. THE PEEIOD OE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 

§ 475. In the beginning of May the deputies of the three Estates, 
and among them some of the most talented and accomplished men of 
France, assembled themselves in Versailles. The third Estate, irri- 
tated by the neglect of the court at the opening and during the 
audience, came to a rupture with the two privileged Estates at the 
first sittings, when the latter required that the Estates should carry 
on their debates separately, whilst the former insisted upon a general 
council and individual votes. After a contest of some weeks, the 
third Estate, which had chosen the astronomer, Bailli, the freedom- 
inspired representative of Paris, for its president, but 
which was guided by the siiperior talents of Sieyes and 
Mirabeau, declared itself a National Assembly, upon which it was 
joined by portions of the other Estates. The Assembly at once 
passed the resolution of allowing the levying of the present taxes for 
only so long as the Estates should remain undissolved. This pro- 
ceeding disturbed the court, and inspired it with the thought of 
granting a constitution to the nation, and thus rendering the Es- 
tates unnecessary. Eor this purpose a royal sitting was appointed, 
and the hall of assembly closed for a few days. Upon the 
intelligence of this, the deputies proceeded to the empty 
saloon of the Ball-house, and raised their hands in a solemn vow not 
to separate till they had given a new constitution to the nation. 
When this saloon was also closed, the meetings were held in the 
church of St. Louis. The royal sitting took place on the 23rd of 
June. But neither the speech of the king, nor the sketch of the new 
constitution afforded due satisfaction, and they were consequently 
received with coldness. After the termination of the sitting, Louis 
dissolved the Assembly. The nobility and clergy obeyed, but the 
citizen class retained their seats, and when the master of the cere- 
monies called upon them to obey, Mirabeau exclaimed, "Tell your 
master that we sit here by the power of the people, and that we are 
only to be driven out by the bayonet!" The weak king did not 

venture to encounter this resolute resistance by force, 
June 27. . . . 

he rather advised the nobility and clergy to join the 

citizens. 

§ 476. The Stoem oe the Bastile. — During these proceedings, 
the fickle populace of Paris were kept in a state of perpetual excite- 
ment by journals, pamphlets, and inflammatory harangues. In the 
open squares, in the coffee-houses, in taverns, and especially in the 
Palais-Royal, the dwelling of the profligate, ambitious, and wealthy 
duke of Orleans, violent discourses were held upon popular freedom, 
the rights of men, and the equality of all classes, by seditious dema- 
gogues, and the assembled crowds were excited to obtain these advan- 



350 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

tages by violence. Among these popular orators, the accomplished 
advocate, Camille Desmoulins, a fanatic in the cause of liberty, was 
especially pre-eminent. The military who were present in the capital 
were hurried away by the enthusiasm for liberty, and a portion enrolled 
themselves in the newly-formed National Guard. The government 
of the city was made over to a democratic municipality, at the head 
of which stood Bailli, as mayor. The court, alarmed at this increas- 
ing ferment, determined upon retiring to Versailles with a few regi- 
ments of German and Swiss troops. In this proceeding, the leaders 
of the movement believed they saw the purpose of some act of violence, 
and made use of it accordingly to excite fresh irritation. The intelli- 
gence was spread abroad in Paris that Necker had been suddenly 
dismissed, and banished from the country, and a favourite of the 
queen placed in his office. This was interpreted as the first step in 
the contemplated outrage, and proved the signal for a general rise. 
Crowds of the lowest mob, wearing the newly-invented national 
cockade (blue, white, and red), paraded riotously through the streets, 
the alarum-bell was sounded, the workshops of the gunsmiths plun- 
dered ; tumult and confusion reigned every where. On the 14th 
July, after the populace had taken 30,000 stand of arms and some 
cannon from the Hospital of Invalides, took place the storming 
of the Bastile, an old castle that served as a state prison. The gover- 
nor, Delaunay, and seven of the garrison, fell victims to the popular 
rage ; their heads were carried through the streets upon poles ; and 
many men who were hated as aristocrats were put to death. The 
banished Necker was recalled, and his entrance into the towns and 
villages of France was celebrated as that of a hero crowned with 
victory. In this joyous reception of the minister the people displayed 
their enthusiasm for liberty, and their hatred to the court and the 
aristocracy. Lafayette, the champion of the liberty of America, was 
appointed commander of the National Guard, and whilst the king 
returned to Paris, and exhibited himself to the assembled people from 
the balcony of the council-house, with the cockade in his hat, the 
count of Artois, and many nobles of the first rank, as Conde, 
Polignac, left their country in mournful anticipation of the coming 
event. 

§ 477. TnE New System. — Since the storm of the Bastile, the 
laws and magistrates had lost their authority in Prance, and the 
power lay in the hands of the populace. The country people no 
longer paid their tithes, taxes, and feudal dues to the clergy and 
nobles, but took vengeance for the long oppression they had suffered 
by destroying the manorial castles. "When intelligence of these pro- 
ceedings spread abroad, it was proposed in the National Assembly, 
that the xipper classes should prove to the people by their actions, 
that they were willing to lighten their burdens, and that, with this 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 351 

purpose, they should renounce, of their own free will, all the inherited 
feudal privileges of the middle ages. This proposal excited a storm 
of enthusiasm and self-renunciation. None would be behind-hand. 
Estates, towns, provinces, each strove for the honour of 
making the greatest sacrifices for the common good. 
This was the celebrated 4th of August, when in one feverous and 
excited assembly, all tithes, socage duties, manorial rights, corporate 
bodies, &c, were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the equality 
of all citizens of the state before the law and in regard to taxation 
was decreed. These resolutions, and the necessary laws and arrange- 
ments required for their reduction to practice which were gradually 
adopted, produced, in a short time, a complete revolution in all exist- 
ing conditions. The Church lost her possessions, and was subjected 
to the state ; monasteries and religious orders were dissolved and the 
clergy paid by the state, the bishoprics newly regulated, and religious 
freedom established. Priests were required to swear allegiance, like 
officers of state, to the new constitution ; but as the pope forbade it, 
the greater number refused the oath, which was the occasion of the 
French clergy being divided into sworn and unsworn priests : the 
latter lost then offices and were exposed to all kinds of persecutions, 
but enjoyed the confidence of the faithful among the people. The 
noble forfeited not only his privileges and the greater part of his 
income, but he also lost the external distinctions of his rank, by the 
abolition of all titles, coats of arms, orders, &c. Upon the principle 
of equality, all Frenchmen were to be addressed as " citizens." For 
the purpose of utterly annihilating every remnant of the ancient 
system, France received a new geographical division into departments 
and arrondissements ; a new system of jtidicature with jurymen ; 
equality of weights, measures, and standards ; and lastly, a consti- 
tutional government, in which the privileges of royalty were limited 
beyond what was befitting, and the legislative power committed to a 
single chamber, with a general right of election. 

§ 478. The King and the National Assembly at Paeis. — 
When the king hesitated to promulgate the resolutions of the Assem- 
bly as laws, the report was again propagated of a contemplated stroke 
of state policy. This report gained strength when the Flemish regi- 
ment was ordered to Versailles, and the king was indiscreet enough 
to show himself, with the queen and dauphin, at a feast given by the 
body-guard to the newly-arrived officers, and thus to give occasion to 
imprudent speeches, toasts, and songs, among the assembled troops, 
who were heated with drinking. This occurrence was soon made 
known by busy tongues in Paris, and added to the popular excite- 
ment, which had besides been increased by a scarcity of bread. Ac- 
cordingly, on the 5th of October, an innumerable multitude, chiefly 
of women, proceeded to Versailles to demand from the king relief 



552 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

from the scarcity of bread, and a return of the court to Paris. The 
king at first attempted to pacify them by a conciliatory ansAver. But 
a wing of the palace was stormed during the night, and the guard 
put to the sword; the arrival of Lafayette, with the National 
Guard, prevented any farther mischief. Upon the following day, the 
king was obliged to consent to proceed to Paris with his famdy, under 
the escort of this frightful crew, and to take up his residence in the 
Tuileries, which had for many years remained unoccupied. Shortly 
after followed the National Assembly also, for which the riding- 
school in the neighbourhood of the palace had been prepared. The 
power now fell more and more into the hands of the lower class, who 
were kept in perpetual excitement by licentious journalists and 
popular leaders, and were goaded to hatred against the court and the 
" aristocrats." The " Priend of the People" of the insolent Marat, a 
physician from Neuchatel, was distinguished by its violence. The 
democratic clubs, which increased every day in extent and influence, 
also aided the revolution. The Jacobin club, iu particular, which had 
branches in all the towns of Prance, acquired a place in the history 
of the world. The members, who wore the red cap of the convicts of 
the galleys, as a distinction, aimed at a republic, with freedom and 
equality for all the " citizens." With these was joined the club of 
Cordeliers, which numbered some of the most daring men of the 
revolution, as Danton and Camille Desmoulins, among its members. 
The Constitutional club, on the other hand, to which Lafayette had 
joined himself, declined in importance every day. 

§ 479. The Ceremony oe Federation. — Plight oe the King. 
On the day of the year in which the Bastile was taken a 
' ' ' grand federative festival was arranged in the Champ de 
Mars. It must have been a moving spectacle, when Talleyrand at 
the head of 300 priests, clothed in white, and girded with tri-coloured 
scarves, performed the consecration of the banner at the altar of the 
country ; when Lafayette, in the name of the National Guard, of the 
president of the National Assembly, and, at length, of the king himself, 
vowed fidelity to the constitution ; when the innumerable multitude 
raised their hands aloft and repeated after him the oath of citizen- 
ship, and the queen herself, carried away by enthusiasm, raised the 
Dauphin in the air and joined in the acclamations. This was the 
last day of happiness for the king, whose situation after this grew 
constantly worse. Necker, no longer equal to the difficulties, left 
Prance and retired to Switzerland. Mirabeau, won over by the court, 
opposed farther encroachments upon the kingly poAver with the whole 
of his eloquence, inasmuch as he believed a constitutional monarchy 
and not a republic to be the best government for Prance. Unfortu- 
nately for the king, this great man died in his forty- 
second year of a sickness brought on by his disorderly life 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 353 

and by over-exertion. A splendid funeral ceremonial gave evidence 
of the influence of the man in whom sank the last strong pillar of 
the throne. "Weak and unself-reliant as Louis XVI. was, he now 
lost all firmness. By his refusal to receive an unsworn priest as his 
confessor, or to declare the emigrants traitors, who were endeavour- 
ing from Coblentz to excite the European courts to a crusade against 
Prance, he excited a suspicion that he was not honestly a supporter 
of the constitution he had sworn to, and not altogether ignorant of 
the efforts of the emigrants. The more this suspicion gained ground 
with the people, the more perilous became the position of the king. 
At this crisis, Louis embraced the desperate resolution of secretly 
flying to the northern frontier of his kingdom. Bouille, a resolute 
general, in Lorraine, was let into the secret, and promised to support 
the scheme with his troops. Leaving behind him a letter, in which 
he protested against all the acts which had been forced from him 
since October, 1789, the king happily escaped, with his family, from 
Paris in a large carriage. But the clumsily executed project 
' ' nevertheless miscarried. Louis was recognized in St. Mene- 
hould by the postmaster, Drouet, stopped by the militia at Varennes, 
and led back to Paris at the command of the National Assembly, who 
sent three of their members, and among them, Petion, to receive the 
royal family. The suspension of the royal authority, which had 
already been pronounced by the Assembly, remained in force, till 
Louis proclaimed, and swore to observe, the Constitution completed 
at the end of September. 

3. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND THE EALL OE THE MONARCHY 
(OCTOBER 1, 1791 — SEPTEMBER 20, 1792). 

§ 480. The Girondists. — As the members of the Constituent 
Assembly had voluntarily excluded themselves from the new Cham- 
ber, the elections to the Legislative Assembly which were carried on 
under the influence of the Jacobins, mostly terminated in favour of 
the republicans. These latter, however, soon divided into a radical- 
democratic and a moderate party : the former, from its position in 
the House, was called the Mountain ; the latter received the name of 
Girondists, because many of its speakers were from Bordeaux and 
the department of the Gironde. Among the latter, who, at the 
commencement, assembled themselves around the minister, Poland, 
and his intelligent and high-minded wife, were men of great oratorical 
talents and exalted civic virtues, as Vergniaud, Lanjuinais, Barba- 
rous, Brissot, &c. The Girondists formed the majority, as the minis- 
try, consisting of Poland, Dumourier, &c, belonged to this party. 

The attention of the government and the Assembly was particu- 
larly directed to the priests, who had refused the oath, and to the 
emigrants. Both were endeavouring to overthrow the existing order 

a a 



So [' THE LATEST PERIOD. 

of things : the former by exciting hatred and discontent among the 
French people ; the latter by making military preparations at Coblentz, 
and endeavouring to stir up foreign powers to an armed invasion 
of France. The Assembly therefore determined upon seeking out 
and arresting the unsworn priests, and declaring the emigrants 
traitors and conspirators, and punishing them by the loss of their 
estates and incomes. The king put his veto upon both these resolu- 
tions, and prevented their execution. This refusal was ascribed to 
the secret hopes entertained by the court of assistance from foreign 
powers and of the triumph of the emigrants, and thus the temper 
of the people grew continually more hostile. It was also known 
that the queen was in correspondence with her brother, the 
emperor of Austria, and that she looked for support and safety in 
the emigrant noblesse. Neither was it any longer doubtful that 
the war must soon break out, since the emperor of Austria and the 
long of Prussia, after a conference in Pillnitz (August, 1791), were 
making preparations, and demanded of the French government not 
only to make befitting indemnification to the German princes and 
nobles who had suffered loss by the abolition of tithes and feudal 
burdens, and to restore the province of Avignon that had been 
wrested from the pope, but to arrange the government upon the plan 
proposed by the king himself in June, 1789. These demands were 
April 20, followed by a declaration of war against Austria and 
1792. Prussia on the part of the French government, to which 

the king yielded his consent with tears. For the purpose of securing 
the capital and the National Assembly against any attack, it was 
resolved to summon 20,000 of the federates from the southern pro- 
vinces, \mder pretence of celebrating the festival of the Bastile, and to 
commit the defence of Paris to them. But Louis refused his consent 
to this resolution also. Upon this, the Girondist ministers laid down 
their offices, after Madame Poland had reproached and reprimanded 
the king in a letter that was soon in the hands of every body. These 
proceedings inflamed the irritation to such an extent that it became 
easy for the republicans to excite a popular insurrection. On the 
20th of June, the day of the year of the meeting in the ball- 
house, the terrible mob, armed with pikes, marched from the suburbs, 
under the conduct of the brewer, Santerre, and the butcher, Legen- 
dre, into the Tuileries, to force the king to confirm the decree against 
the unsworn priests and for the summoning of the National Guard. 
But here also Louis l'emained firm. He defied for several hours all 
threats and dangers, and endured the insolence of the mob, which even 
placed the red Jacobin cap upon his head and gave him wine to drink, 
with the courage of a martyr. The rather tardy arrival of Petion 
with the burgher guard at length freed him from his perilous 
position. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 355 

§ 481. These proceedings were the prelude to the eventful Tenth 
or Atjoust. War had already commenced to the great joy of the 
Prussian officers, who promised themselves great glory and little 
trouble from the " military promenade " as they called the French 
campaign. The Prussians marched into Lorraine under the command 
of duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, known in the seven years' war. 
An Austrian force under Clerfait was placed at his command ; 12,000 
emigrants joined themselves to him, who were burning with eagerness 
to overthrow the " government of advocates," and to have vengeance 
upon their enemies. On setting out, the duke published a mani- 
festo, drawn up by one of the emigrants, full of injurious menaces 
against the National Assembly, the city of Paris, the National Guard, 
and all the French who favoured the new system. The insolent tone 
of this proclamation made an indescribable impression upon the peo- 
ple who were "enthusiastic for the new order of things, and produced 
the fiercest rage against the emigrants and their defenders. This 
feeling was taken advantage of by the Jacobins for the overthrow of 
the king. Supported by the declaration of the Assembly, " The coun- 
try is in danger," they summoned from Marseilles, Brest, and other 
maritime towns, crowds of the lowest refuse of the people, even galley- 
slaves, to Paris, then formed a committee of insurrection, and prepared 
the rude and sturdy inhabitants of the suburbs for a decisive blow. 
The alarm sounded at midnight on the 10th of August. A fearful 
mob proceeded, in the first place, to the Hotel de Ville for the pur- 
pose of establishing a new democratic municipality, and then marched 
to the royal palace which was defended by 900 Swiss, and the Parisian 
National Guard under the command of Mandat. The honest Mandat 
was resolved to check the advancing masses which were ever assuming 
a more menacing aspect, by force ; his destruction was consequently 
resolved upon by the democrats. He was commanded to appear at 
the Hotel de Yille, and assassinated on his way thither ; upon which 
the National Guard, uncertain what to do, and disgusted by the 
presence of a number of nobles in the palace, for the most part dis- 
persed themselves. The mob constantly assumed a more threatening 
aspect ; cannon were turned upon the palace, the pikemen pressed 
forwards upon every entrance, the people loudly demanded the de- 
position of the king. At this crisis, Louis suffered himself to be 
persuaded to seek for protection with his family in the hall of the 
National Assembly, where they passed sixteen hours in a narrow closet. 
The king had scarcely left the palace before the tumultuous multitude 
pressed forward more violently ; the Swiss guard maintained a gallant 
resistance, and defended the entrance. When the report of musketry 
was heard in the adjoining Assembly, the indignant representatives 
of the people compelled the intimidated king to give his guard orders 
to cease firing. By this order the faithful defenders of monarchy 

a a 2 



356 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

were doomed to destruction. Scarcely had the furious mob observed 
that the enemy's fire had ceased, before they stormed the palace, 
slaughtered those they found in it, and destroyed the furniture. 
Nearly 5000 men, and among them, 700 Swiss, fell in the struggle, 
or died afterwards, the victims of the popular fury. In the mean 
time the National Assembly, upon the proposal of Yergniaud, em- 
braced the resolution, " to suspend the royal authority, to place the 
king and his family under control, to give the prince a tutor, and to 
assemble a National Convention." The Temple, a strong fortress 
erected by the knights templars, soon enclosed the imprisoned royal 
family. 

§ 482. The Days oe September. — After the suspension of the 
king, a new ministry was formed by the National Assembly, in which, 
by the side of the Girondist, Roland, and others, the terrible Danton 
held office as minister of justice. This ministry, and the new Common 
Council of Paris which had appointed itself, and which, after the 10th 
of August, had strengthened itself by members who might be de- 
pended upon as hesitating at no wdckedness, now possessed the whole 
power. The Municipal Council ordered the police of the capital to 
be conducted by pikemen, and the prisons were quickly filled with 
the "suspected" and "aristocrats." It was now that the frightful 
resolution was matured of getting rid of the opponents of the new 
order of things by a bloody tribunal, and of suppressing all resistance 
by terror. After the recusant priests had been slaughtered by hun- 
dreds in the monasteries and prisons, the dreadful days of September 
were commenced. Prom the 2nd to the 7th of September bands of 
hired murderers and villains marched into the prisons. Twelve of 
them acted as jurymen and judge, the others as executioners. The 
imprisoned, with the exception of a few whose names were marked 
upon a list, were then put to death by this inhuman crew under a 
semblance of judicial proceedings. Nearly 3000 human beings were 
either put to death singly or slaughtered in masses by these wretches, 
who received a daily stipend from the Common Council for their 
"labours." Among the murdered was the princess Lamballe, the 
friend of the queen ; a troop of pikemen carried her head upon a pole 
to the Temple, and held it before Maria Antoinette's window. The 
example of the capital was imitated in many of the departments. The 
barbarous destruction of all statues, coats of arms, inscriptions, and 
other memorials of a former period, formed the conclusion of the 
August and September days, which were the transition period between 
the French monarchy and republic. The autumnal equinox was dis- 
tinguished as the commencement of the reign of liberty 
' and equality under the republican National Convention. 

Lafayette, who was Berviug with the northern army, and who, 
after the days of June, had returned to Paris on his own responsi- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 357 

bility, for the purpose, if possible, of saving the ting, was now sum- 
moned before the National Assembly to answer for his conduct. 
Convinced that the Jacobins were seeking his death, he fled with 
some friends, who shared his sentiments, to Holland, that he might 
escape to America ; but he fell into the hands of enemies, who treated 
him like a prisoner of war, and allowed him to live for five years in 
the dungeons of Olmutz and Magdeburg. Talleyrand repaired to 
England, and from thence to America, where he awaited better 
times. 

4. REPUBLICAN TRANCE "UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OE THE NATIONAL 
CONVENTION (SEPTEMBER, 1792 — OCTOBER, 1795). 

§ 483. Execution oe the King. — The new Assembly, which, 
under the influence of the Jacobins, had been elected by general 
suffrage, was composed almost exclusively of republicans, but of 
different dispositions and opinions. The moderates, Girondists, who 
were aiming at a republican form of government upon the model of 
antiquity, or upon that of the North Americans, and who abhorred 
bloodshed as a means, gradually fell before the radicals and demo- 
crats, who first overthrew by violence all the existing arrangements, 
and then sought to found a new system of " liberty and equality " 
upon the levelled surface. They acted upon the principle, " That he 
who is not for us is against us," and attempted to bear down all 
opposition by terror and bloodshed. Strong in the Jacobin clubs and 
in the wild bands of the numerous combatants of the revolution, who 
were distinguished by the name of " Sans- Culottes," and who were 
maintained in a constant state of excitement by songs (Marseillaise, 
C,a ira), revolution festivals, trees of liberty, and such like matters, 
the destructive party soon obtained the upper hand. The process 
against the king, "Louis Capet," was one of the first proceedings of 
the National Convention. An iron safe had been discovered in a 
wall of the Tuileries containing secret letters and documents, from 
which it was apparent that the Erench court had not only been in 
alliance with Austria and the emigrants, and had projected plans for 
overthrowing the constitution that had been sworn to by Louis, but 
that it had also attempted to win over single members of the National 
Assembly (for example, Mirabeau), by annuities, bribery, and other 
means. It was upon this that the republicans, who would willingly 
have been quit of the king, founded a charge of treason and con- 
spiracy against the coimtry and the people. Louis, with the assist- 
ance of two advocates, to whom the noble Malasherbes (§ 460), of 
his own free impulse, associated himself, appeared twice before the 
Convention (11th and 26th December), but despite his own dignified 
bearing and defence, and despite the efforts of the Girondist party to 
have the sentence referred to a general assembly of the people, Louis 



358 TIIE LATEST PERIOD. 

January 17, was condemned to death in a stormy meeting, by a small 
1793. majority of five voices. The party of the Mountain, where 

the advocate, Maximilian Eobespierre, the former marquis St. Just, 
the frightful Danton, the lame Couthon, and the duke of Orleans, who 
had assumed the name of Citizen Egalite, were the leaders and chiefs, 
had left no means unattempted to produce this result by terror ; they 
would, nevertheless, have failed in their purpose, had they not carried 
a resolution beforehand in the Assembly, that a bare majority should 
be sufficient for a sentence of death, and not, as had heretofore been 
the custom, that two-thirds of the votes should be necessary. The 
murder was thus veiled by a show of justice. On the 21st of January 
the unfortunate king ascended the scaffold in the square of the Revo- 
lution. The drums of the National Guard drowned his last words, 
aud " Robespierre's women" greeted his bloody head with the shout 
of " Vive la Republique." 

§ 484. Dttmourieb. — In the mean time, the Prussians had marched 
through Lorraine into Champagne. But the duke of Brunswick, 
accustomed to the slow and circumspect proceedings of the seven 
years' war, wasted time in the conquest of unimportant fortresses, 
and entered Champagne in an unfavourable period of the year, when 
the roads were impassable from the rain, and the army was weakened 
and destroyed by the use of unwholesome provisions and of unripe 
September fruit. After the battle of Valmy, where Dumourier and 
20, 1792. Kellermann successfully repulsed the attack of the enemy, 
the Prussian generals relinquished the idea of any farther advance, 
and concluded a composition with Dumourier, by which the Prussians 
were assured of an uninterrupted retreat. The Austrians, who had 
marched from the Netherlands, met with no better success. After 

the battle of Jemappes, Dumourier conquered Belo-imn 
ISiovember G. . " ' x ° 

and Liege, and threatened the frontiers of Holland, whilst 

the Hussar-general, Custine, made himself master of the towns on 
October 21, ^ ie Rhine, and gained the fortress of Mayence, where 
1792. there were many adherents of the ideas of freedom and 

equality, for the French republic. The citizens of Mayence, deserted 
by their elector, their clergy, and the nobility, received the French 
troops with enthusiasm. George Forster, the circumnavigator of the 
globe, was the soul of the republican party in Mayence. This success 
of the French arms inspired the republicans with fresh courage, and 
the powers of Europe with fresh alarm. Were they to look quietly 
on, whilst a king was murdered in a revolting manner in Paris, whilst 
the revolutionists, intoxicated with success, called upon the people 
every where to overthrow their monarchical governments, and pro- 
mised them the protection of the French nation in establishing their 
republics ? The enthusiasm of the people for the new ideas gave 
great assistance to the republican arms : not only the thrones of kings 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 359 

and the dominions of princes, but the privileges and possessions of 
the nobility and clergy were in peril. Fresh armies from all parts of 
Europe were therefore marched across the French frontiers for the 
purpose of suppressing a revolution which endangered the peace and 
security of other states. England, where the Tories, under the guid- 
ance of the younger Pitt, were in possession of the government, and 
where the orator, Edmund Burke, once the advocate of the American 
War of Liberty both in speech and writing, took the field against 
the revolution, and solemnly separating himself from his old friend, 
Fox, the leader of the liberal "Whigs, headed the " Coalition" against 
France. English subsidies soon gave fresh life to the war. An Aus- 
trian army appeared in the Netherlands under the prince of Coburg, 
who was assisted by Clerfait and the Archduke Charles, drove back 
March 18, the French over the Maase, and defeated Dumourier at 
17'J3. Neerwinden. This defeat was ascribed by Dumourier 

principally to the Jacobins, because they had corrupted the army, 
had neglected the necessary military supplies, and had placed an 
incompetent coadjutor by his side. In his disgust, he allowed it to 
appear pretty unequivocally that he meditated the overthrow of the 
republican constitution, and the re-establishment of a king (for which 
office he had selected the duke of Orleans, or his son Louis-Philippe) . 
The Convention, apprized of this intention, impeached the general, 
and required his presence in Paris to answer for himself. But instead 
of obeying the summons, Dumourier ordered the ambassadors of the 
Convention to be seized and delivered up to the enemy, and then went 
over with a part of- his troops to the Austrians. 

About the same time, Mayence, after the most obstinate defence, 
and after enduring the extremities of famine, fell again into the hands 
of the Prussians, who once more approached the frontiers of France. 

§ 485. Dumourier's treachery was employed by the Jacobins for 
the overthrow of the Girondists, to which party Dumourier had 
belonged. The Girondists, enraged at the increasing power of the 
populace in Paris, and the unbridled acts of violence committed by 
the mob, entertained the project of converting France into a repub- 
lican union like North America, and by this means, destroying the 
supremacy of the capital. The Mountain and the Jacobins, who saw 
that this scheme would weaken the revolutionary power of France, 
and endanger the future of the democratic republic, commenced a 
war of life and death with the Girondists (also called Brissotins) 
upon this point. They accused them of an understanding with 
Dumourier, they reproached them with weakening the power of the 
people, and destroying the republic at a moment when France was 
threatened with enemies both within and without, and when all these 
attacks were ignominiously repulsed by the victorious eloquence of 
the Girondists, the savage Marat, in his "Friend of the People," 



3G0 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

called upon the populace to rise against the moderate and lukewarm, 
and thus gave occasion to daily riots and tumults, which disturbed 
the capital and endangered life and property. All moderate and 
reputable people were in continual peril. It was in vain that the 
Girondists succeeded in having Marat brought before a court of 
justice, he was acquitted by the Jacobins, and carried back to the 
Convention in triumph by the people ; it was in vain that the Giron- 
dists procured the appointment of a Commission of Twelve, who were 
to discover and punish the exciters of the tumult — when the Com- 
mission ordered Hebert, who, in his vulgar and libellous journal, 
" Pere Duchesne," excited the people to tumult and murder, aud some 
of his associates, to be imprisoned, the raging mob compelled their 
release — and then arranged the great insurrection of the 31st 
of May and 1st of June. They made the branded Henriot, who had 
first been a lacquey, then a smuggler, and lastly a spy of the police, 
commander of the National Guard. Under his guidance, the innu- 
merable multitiide of the sans-culottes surrounded the Tuileries, 
where the Convention was holding its meeting, and demanded with 
threats the abolition of the Commission of Twelve, and the exclusion 
of the Girondists and the moderates. It was in vain that the latter 
employed the whole force of their eloquence to induce the Assembly 
not to consent to the demands of the people : the mob pressed into 
the hall and the galleries, and demanded its sacrifice with wild shouts 
and cries. It was in vain that the majority of the Assembly, the 
courageous president, Herault, at their head, attempted to leave the 
apartment where they could no longer debate in freedom ; driven 
back by Henriot, nothing was left to them but to consent to the 
demands of the people and the party of the Mountain, and to admit 
the supremacy of the mob. Thirty -four Girondists were immediately 
thrust out and imprisoned; twenty of them (Petion, Guadet, and 
Barbaroux, were of the number) escaped, and summoned the inhabit- 
ants of Normandy, Bretagne, and the maritime cities of the south, 
to take up arms against the Jacobins ; the remainder died some time 
after on the guillotine. The assassination of Marat, by the noble 
Charlotte Corday, who was inspired by a spirit of genuine liberty, 
and a frightful civil war, were the first results of this act of violence. 
Most of the escaped Girondists also died violent deaths, by their own 
hands or those of others. Thus, Roland, Petion, Barbaroux, Con- 
dorcet, and others. Madame Poland also died on the guillotine. 
Seventy-three members of the Convention, who had sided with the 
Girondists, were also expelled, so that the Convention was now 
entirely ruled by the democrats of the Mountain. 

§ 486. The Reign of the Jacobins. — The National Convention 
acquired greater unanimity by the exclusion of the Girondists and the 
moderates ; so that from this point it was enabled to develop a frightful 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 361 

power and activity. For the purpose of better superintending and 
conducting its multitudinous affairs, it resolved itself into committees, 
of which the committee of public safety and that of public security 
acquired a frightful celebrity by the persecution of every one opposed 
to the new order of things. A revolutionary tribunal, consisting of 
twelve jurymen and five judges, to which that man of blood, Fouquier 
Tinville, occupied the office of public accuser, seconded the activity of 
these committees by a cruel and summary administration of justice. 
At the head of the committee of public safety stood three men whose 
names became the terror and horror of all just men — the envious and 
malignant Robespierre, the bloodthirsty Couthon, and the fanatic for 
republican liberty and equality, St. Just. They pursued their bloody 
object without regard to human life : every thing that ventured to 
oppose their stormy course was unpityingly hurled down. Thus 
originated the terrible period of the years '93 and '94, which displayed 
itself in three different directions' — within, by a cruel persecution of all 
citizens who were known as aristocrats or favourers of royalty, and by 
a bloody suppression of insurrections in the south and west ; with- 
out, by a vigorous defensive war against innumerable enemies. 

§ 487. — 1. Persecution oe Aristocrats. — Since the municipal 
government in Paris had been in the exclusive possession of Jacobins 
and democrats of the most extreme class, since democratical commit- 
tees had had the political supervision of all the sections, since, 
beside the National Guard, a revolutionary army of sans-culottes 
had stood at the disposal of the republican government, the whole 
power had been in the hands of the populace and their frantic leaders. 
The Jacobin clubs in Paris and the provincial cities possessed the 
government ; their orators and presidents executed, with the aid of 
the people, the most sanguinary outrages upon all who were not of 
their own party. The most effectual means of destroying all oppo- 
nents was the frightful law against the suspected, which threatened 
with death all "enemies of the country," all who manifested any 
attachment to the former condition of things, or to the priesthood or 
the nobility. In consequence of this and similar laws, the prisons 
were filled with thousands of so-called aristocrats ; and forty or sixty 
men were daily dragged to the guillotine. All those who were 
distinguished from the ruling democracy by rank, wealth, refinement, 
or nobility of mind, stood in continual peril of their lives. The 
malicious slander of an enemy, the accusation of a spy, the hatred of a 
sans-culotte, were sufficient to bring an innocent man to prison, and 
from prison to the scaffold. The transition was so sudden, that death 
lost its terrors, and the prisons became the scenes of cheerful and 
refined society, and of intellectual conversation. The most noble and 
distinguished men of France were among the victims. The former 
minister, Malasherbes, the members of the constituent assembly, 



362 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Bailli, Barnave, &c, all who belonged to the old monarchy, and who 
had not saved themselves by flight, died by the guillotine. Among 
them was the severely-tried queen, Marie Antoinette, Avho 
displayed, during her trial, and at her execution, a firm- 
ness and strength of soul that was worthy of her education and her 
birth. Her son died beneath the cruel treatment of a Jacobin ; her 
daughter (the duchess of Angouleme) carried a gloomy spirit and an 
embittered heart with her to the grave. Louis XVI.'s pious sister, 
May 10, Elizabeth, also died on the scaffold ; the head of the 

1794. profligate duke of Orleans, whom even the favour of 

Danton could not preserve from the envy of Eobespierre, had fallen 
before her own. 

§ 4S8. — 2. Outeages ix the South. — The bloody rule of the 
Mountain party displayed itself in its most frightful height in the 
suppression of the revolt against the reign of terror. When the 
inhabitants of Normandy and Bretagne rose in support of the 
excluded Girondists, the committee of public safety ordered the 
district between the Seine, the Loire, and the extremest sea-coast to 
be visited with blood and slaughter by the terrible Carrier. This 
monster ordered, at Nantes, his victims to be drowned by hundreds 
in the Loire, by means of ships with movable bottoms (noyades). 
The proceedings of the Jacobins in the cities of the south, Lyons, 
Marseilles, and Toulon, were still more barbarous. In the first of 
these towns, Chalier, who had formerly been a priest, and now, as 
president of the Jacobin club, excited the people by scandalous 
placards, to plunder and destroy the " aristocrats." Irritated at this 
audacity, the respectable and wealthy citizens of Lyons, who were 
t i r -m ^ us menaced in their kves and property, procured the 
execution of the demagogue. This deed filled the Parisian 
terrorists with fury. A republican army appeared before the walls of 
the town, which, after an obstinate contest, was taken and fearfully 
punished. Ereron, a companion of Marat, Eouche, Couthon, and 
others, caused the inhabitants to be shot down in crowds, because the 
guillotine was too tedious in its operations ; whole streets were either 
pulled down or blown into the air with gunpowder. The goods of the 
rich were divided among the popidace ; Lyons was to be annihilated, 
reduced to a nameless common. The republicans raged in a similar 
way in Marseilles and Toulon. The royalists of Toulon had called 
upon the English for assistance, and surrendered to them their town 
and harbour. Confident in this assistance, and in the strength of 
their walls, the citizens of Toulon bade defiance to their republican 
enemies. But the army of sans-culottes, in which the young Corsican, 
Napoleon Buonaparte, exhibited the first proofs of his military 
talents, overcame all obstacles. Toulon was stormed. The English, 
unable to maintain the town, set fire to the fleet, and left the unfor- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. gQ3 

turtate inhabitants to the frightful vengeance of the Convention. 
Here also the barbarous Ereron ordered all the wealthy citizens to be 
shot, and their property to be divided among the sans-culottes. The 
respectable inhabitants fled, and abandoned the city to the mob and 
the galley-slaves. Tallien behaved in a similar manner in Bourdeaux ; 
and in the north of Trance, Lebon marched from place to place with a 
guillotine. 

§ 489. Scenes oe blood in La Yexdee. — But the fate of La 
Yendee was the most frightful. This singular country, situated in 
the west of Prance, was covered with woods, hedges, and thickets, 
and intersected by ditches. Here dwelt a contented people, in 
country quietude, and in the simplicity of the olden time. The 
peasants and tenants were attached to their landlords ; they loved the 
king; and clung with reverence to their clergy and their church 
iisages, which had been dear and sacred to them from their youth. 
"When the National Assembly slaughtered or expelled their unsworn 
priests, when the blood of their king was poured out on the guillotine, 
when the children of the peasants were called away, by a general 
summons, to the army — then the enraged people roused themselves 
to resistance and civil conflict. Under brave leaders, of undis- 
tinguished birth, as Charette, Stofflet, Cathelineau, who were joined 
by a few nobles, Laroche-Jaquelein, D'Elbee, &c, they at first drove 
back the republican army, conquered Saumur, and threatened TSTantes. 
Upon this, the Convention dispatched a revolutionary army to La 
Yendee, under the command of AYestermann and the frantic Jacobins, 
Bonsin and Bossigiiol. These fell upon the inhabitants Kke wild 
beasts, set fire to towns, villages, farms, and woods, and attempted to 
overcome the resistance of the " royalists " by terror and outrage. 
But the courage of the Yendean peasants remained unsubdued. It 
was not until the general, Kleber, marched against La Yendee with 
the brave troops who had returned to their homes after the surrender 
of Mayence, that this_ unfortunate people gradually succumbed to the 
attacks of their enemies, after the land had become a desert, and 
thousands of the inhabitants had saturated the soil with their blood. 
La Yendee, however, was only restored to tranquillity when Hoche, 
who was equally renowned for his courage and philanthropy, assumed 
the command of the army, offered peace to those who were weary of 
the contest, and reduced the refractory to submission. Stoffiet and 
Charette were made prisoners of war, and shot. 

§ 490. Ball oe the Danto>"tsts. — The rage and cruelty of the 
Jacobins at length excited the disgust of the chiefs of the Cordeliers, 
Danton and Camille Desmoulins. The former, who was rather a 
voluptuary than a tyrant, and who was capable of kindly feelings, had 
grown weary of slaughter, and had retired into the country for a few 
months with a young wife, to enjoy the wealth and happiness that 



364 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

the revolution had brought him ; hut Camille Desrnoulins, in his 
much read paper, "The Old Cordelier," applied the passages where 
the Eoman historian, Tacitus, describes the tyranny and cruelty of 
Tiberius so appropriately to his own times, that the application to 
the three chiefs of the committee of safety and their laws against 
the suspected was not to be mistaken. This enraged the Jacobins ; 
and when, about this time, several friends and adherents of Danton 
(Fabre d'Eglantine, Chabot, &c.) were guilty of deceit and corruption 
in connexion with the abolition of the East India Company, and 
others gave offence by their sacrilegious proceedings, the committee 
of safety made use of the opportunity to destroy the whole party of 
Danton. For since the Convention had altered the calendar and the 
names of the months, had made the year commence on the 22nd of 
September, had abolished the Sunday and festivals, and introduced in 
their place the decades and sans-culotte feasts, many Dantonists, 
like Hebert, Chaumette, Momoro, Cloots, and others, had occasioned 
great scandal by their animosity to priests and Christianity. They 
desecrated and plundered the churches, ridiculed the mass vestments 
and the church utensils, which they carried through the streets in 
blasphemous processions, raged with the spirit of Vandals against all 
the monuments of Christianity, and at length carried a resolution 
through the Convention, that the worship of Eeason should be intro- 
duced in place of the catholic service of God. A solemn festival, in 
which Momoro's pretty wife personated the Goddess of Eeason in the 
church of Notre Dame, marked the commencement of this new reli- 
gion. Eobespierre, who plumed himself upon his reputation for 
virtue because he was not a participator in the excesses or avarice of 
Danton and his associates, took offence at these proceedings. He 
determined to destroy their originators, and in their fall to involve 
the destruction of Desrnoulins and Danton, before whose powerful 
natures his own spirit, which was filled with envy and ambition, stood 
abashed. Scarcely, therefore, had Danton resumed his seat in the 

™ i ,«,.„ Convention, before St. Just began the violent struggle by 
March, 1794. ' . . & •,••-,-, i • 

a remarkable proposal, in which he divided the enemies 

of the republic into three classes, the corrupt, the ultra-revolutionary, 
and the moderates, and insisted upon their punishment. This pro- 
posal resulted in nineteen of the ultra-revolutionaries, and among 
them Cloots, Momoro, Eonsin, and several members of the Common 
Council being led to the guillotine on the 19th of March. On the 
31st of April the corrupt were placed before the Eevolutionary Tri- 
bunal, and Danton, Camille Desrnoulins, Herault de Sechelles, &c. 
maliciously distinguished as their partisans and involved in their 
process. But Danton and Desrnoulins, supported by a raging mob 
that were devoted to them, demanded with vehemence that their 
accusers should be confronted with them. For three days Danton's 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 365 

voice of thunder and the tumult among the populace rendered his 

condemnation impossible. For the first time, the bloody men of the 

Bevolutionary Tribunal became confused. The Convention at length, 

by a law of its own, gave the Tribunal the power of condemning the 

accused who were endeavouring to subvert the existing order of 

things by an insurrection, without further hearing ; upon which the 

blood-stained heroes of the 10th of August and the days of September, 

who during their trial had shown that a lofty spirit might dwell even 

in the bosom of criminals, were led to the guillotine and beheaded, 

a -i ^ ,«^i with a crowd of inferior Hebertists. Thev died with 
April 5, 1794. J 

courage and resolution. 

§ 491. — 3. Wabs of the Eepublic. First Coalition. — Whilst 
these bloody proceedings were going on within, the armies of almost 
all the nations of Europe were marching upon the frontiers of France. 
The Dutch, Austrians, and English were in the Netherlands ; Dutch, 
Prussian, and Austrian troops crossed the Ehine ; Sardinia threatened 
the south-east ; and Spanish and Portuguese armies occupied the 
Pyrenees : at the same time, the English government, conducted by 
Pitt, sought to destroy the naval power of France, to conquer her 
colonies, and to keep the war alive by large subsidies to the con- 
tinental powers. At first, the arms of the allies met with some suc- 
cess ; Alsace and Flanders fell into their hands, and the way to Paris 
stood open. But want of union and want of system prevented any 
brilliant success, although the new method of warfare had not yet 
been created in France. The republicans wished to gain the victory 
by terror. General Beauharnois, who arrived too late to relieve 
Mayence, died on the guillotine ; Custine and his son experienced 
the same fate ; Houchard, the victor of the Dutch and Hanoverians 
September 8, a ^ Handschooten, had a similar fate when he was after- 
1793. wards obliged to retire before the superior force of the 

November enemy ; and Hoche expiated in prison the defeat suffered 
28—30. hy the Hollanders and Prussians at Kaiserslautern. But 

the brave and active Carnot now took his seat in the committee of 
safety, and gave unity and system to the military operations. The 
whole nation was interested in the war by a general summons ; the 
newly acquired freedom awakened courage and enthusiasm among 
the troops ; fanatical bands were now opposed in masses to the enemy, 
and no longer in small divisions ; and the greatest commanders of the 
century rose from the ranks. The generals with their antiquated 
tactics, and with soldiers who fought for pay, and not for liberty or 
their fatherland, could not maintain their ground. Jourdain corn- 
June 26 1794 P euea the evacuation of Belgium in June, after the battle 
of Fleurus ; and, by the beginning of autumn, the Aus- 
trian Netherlands and the frontier fortresses of Holland were in the 
hands of the French. It thus became practicable for General 



366 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Pichegru to undertake a daring expedition in December and January 
across the frozen waters, against the States- General of Holland. 
Pichegru, with an army that was suffering from a want of clothing 
and provisions, made himself master of the rich land, drove the here- 
ditary Stadtholder to England, and brought about the establishment 
of a Batavian Republic, with democratic signorial rights, with trees of 
liberty, and popular unions. Prom this time Holland remained united 
with France ; but not only were the French troops clothed and main- 
tained at the cost of the country, and vast sums sent to Paris to 
defray the expenses of the war, but the English at the same time 
seized upon the Dutch ships and colonies, so that the unfortunate 
country was a sufferer on all hands. 

§ 492. The Peace oe Basle. — The French arms were equally 
successful on the Rhine. The Austrian and Prussian troops retreated 

. _„ . across the German river in October, and abandoned the 
A.D. 1794. . ' 

further side to the French. Shortly after, the Prussian 

government, which was busied with the proceedings in Poland (§ 470), 

,. ]c . 17qr commenced negotiations with France which led to the 

peace of Basle. By this disgraceful peace not only was 
the left bank of the Rhine, together with Holland, abandoned to the 
enemy, but the northern portion of Germany separated by a line of 
demarcation from the southern. "Whilst the war was carried on in 
the latter, the former was declared neutral territory. The Austrians, 
on the other hand, under the conduct of the brave leaders Clerfait 
and "Wurmser, continued the war with greater energy. After Cler- 
fait's victory over Pichegru at Handschuchsheim, the imperialists took 
September 24, Heidelberg, Avhich was in the possession of the French, 
1795- and, after a frightful bombardment of several days, the 

strong town of Mannheim, which, with its abundant military pro- 
visions, had been disgracefully surrended to the enemy at the first 
summons by the governor, Palgrave Oberndorf. A part of the town 
was in ruins when the Germans again entered it. The archduke 
Charles, the brother of the emperor, gave splendid proofs of dis- 
September3, tinguished military talents. He defeated Jourdain at 
1796. Wiirzburg, and compelled him to a hasty retreat upon the 

Rhine. The inhabitants of Spessart and Odenwald, enraged at the 
oppressions and exactions of the French, rose upon their retreating 
enemies, and destroyed them wherever they appeared singly. Moreau 
was more fortunate : he was indeed driven back from Bavaria and 
Swabia, but he gained the Rhine without any great loss by a masterly 

« * 1 m retreat through the valleys of the Black Forest. The 
September 19 & •> 

—October 24, German governments, far from encouraging the people in 
179G. .j-]^ r i s i n g against the enemies of the empire, imitated, 

for the most part, the example of Prussia, and concluded a peace with 
France. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. SG7 

§ 493. Robespiebee's fall.— Since the fall of Danton, the com- 
mittee of safety had ruled with well nigh unlimited sway, and by 
repeated executions and arrests had brought the reign of terror to its 
highest point. But its chiefs had lost the confidence of the people 
and of the Convention : the friends of Danton were on the watch for 
the favourable moment of attack, and the number of their enemies 
was increased, when Robespierre, to put an end to the blasphemous 
proceedings of the adherents of the worship of Reason, had a resolution 
passed by the Convention in May ; " That the existence of a Supreme 
Being and the immortality of the soul were truths:" and rendered 
himself at once hateful and ridiculous by his pride at the new festival 
in honour of the Supreme Being in the Tuileries, at which he offi- 
ciated as high priest. Among his opponents was Tallien, who at a 
former period had been guilty of excesses in Bourdeaux, but who had 
been brought to adopt different principles by the fascinating Fontenay 
Cabarrus. "With him were joined Freron, Fouche, Vadier, the po- 

T i n -r i««i lished rhetorician Barrere, and others. On the 9th Ther- 
July27, 1794. .-,,,„,./, 

midor a battle for life or death commenced in the Conven- 
tion. Robespierre and his adherents were not allowed to speak; 
their voices were drowned in the cries of their enemies, who carried 
through a stormy meeting the resolution, " That the three chiefs of 
the committee of safety, Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, and their 
confederate, Henriot, should be denounced, and conveyed as prisoners 
to the Luxembourg palace." They were liberated by the mob on 
then 1 way ; whereupon the drunken Henriot threatened the Conven- 
tion with the National Guard, whilst the others betook themselves to 
the Hotel de Ville. But the National Assembly was beforehand 
with them by a hasty resolution. A loudly proclaimed sentence of 
outlawry suddenly dispersed Henriot' s army, whilst the citizens who 
were opposed to the Jacobins arranged themselves around the Con- 
vention. The accused were again secured in the Hotel de Ville. 
Henriot crept into a sewer, from whence he was dragged forth by 
hooks. Robespierre attempted to destroy himself by a pistol-shot, 
but only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw, and was first con- 
veyed, horribly disfigured, amidst the curses and execrations of the 
people, before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and then guillotined, with 
twenty-one of his adherents. On the two following days, 
seventy-two Jacobins shared the fate of their leaders. 
§ 494. The Last Days oe the Convention. — Robespierre's 
overthrow by the " Thermidorians" was the commencement of a 
return to moderation and order. The assemblies of the people were 
gradually limited, the power of the Common Council diminished, and 
the lower classes deprived of their weapons. Freron, converted from 
a republican bloodhound into an aristocrat, assembled the young 
men, who from their clothing were called the "gilded youth," around 



368 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

him. These, with the heavy stick they usually carried ahout them, 
attacked the Jacobins in the streets and in their clubs at every oppor- 
tunity, and opposed the song of the " Awakening of the People " to 
the Marseillaise. At length the club was shut up and the cloister of 
the Jacobins pulled down. The Convention strengthened itself by 
the recal of the expelled members and of such Girondists as were still 
left (§ 485), and ordered the worst of the Terrorists, Lebon Carrier, 
Pouquier Tinville, &c, to be executed. But when four of the most 
active members of the committee of safety (Barrere, Vadier, Collot 
d'Herbois, and Billaud-Varennes) were denounced, the Jacobins 
collected the last remains of their strength, and drove the people, 
who were suffering from a scarcity and want of money, to a frightful 
insurrection. Crowds of grisly wretches surrounded the House of 
March 31, Assembly, and demanded, with threatening cries, the 
April], 1795. liberation of the patriots, bread, and the constitution of 
1793. Pichegru, who was just at this moment in Paris, came to the 
assistance of the distressed Convention with soldiers and citizens, and 
dispersed the crowd. The still more formidable insurrection of the 
May 20, 1st Prairial, in which the mob held the Convention sur- 
1795. rounded both within and without from seven o'clock in the 

morning till two at night, for the purpose of enforcing a return to the 
reign of terror, was also suppressed by the courageous president, 
Boissy d'Anglas. Prom this time the power of the Terrorists was 
no more. Many Jacobins died by their own hands ; others were 
beheaded, imprisoned, or transported. By so much the stronger 
became the party of the royalists who wished to have a king again ; 
and when the new government was shortly after determined upon, 
by which the executive power was to be delivered to a Directory of 
five persons, the legislative power to a council of Elders and to the 
council of Pive Hundred, the republican members of the Convention 
feared that during the new election they might be thrust aside by the 
royalists. They therefore made additions to the original charter 
of the constitution, wherein it was declared that two-thirds of the two 
legislative councds must be chosen from members of the Convention. 
The royalists raised objections against this and some other limitations 
of the freedom of election ; and when these were unattended with 
success, they occasioned the insurrection of the Sections. Hereupon, 
the Convention made over to the Corsican, Napoleon Buonaparte, 
the suppression of the insurgent royalists, who were joined by all the 
enemies of the republic and of the revolution. The victory of the 
October 5 13th Vendemiaire, which was fought in the streets of Paris, 
1705- gave the supremacy to the republicans of the Convention, 

and the command of the Italian army to Napoleon, who was then 
twenty-six years of age, and who, a short time before, had married 
Josephine, the widow of General Beauharnois. 



FRANCE UNDER THE DIRECTORY. gQQ 

5. FRANCE TINDER THE DIRECTORY (OCTOBER, 1795 

NOVEMBER 9lH, 1799). 

§ 495. Napoleon in Italy. — The French army in Savoy and on 
the frontiers of Italy was in a melancholy condition. The soldiers 
were in want of every thing. At this crisis, Napoleon appeared as 
their commander-in-chief, and in a short time contrived so to inspirit 
the desponding troops and attach them to his person, that under his 
guidance they cheerfully encountered the greatest dangers. Where 
the love of glory and the sentiment of honour was not sufficient, 
there the treasures of the wealthy Italy served as a stimulus to valour. 
In April, Napoleon defeated the octogenarian Austrian 
general, Beaulieu, at Milesimo and Montenotte, separated, 
by this victory, the Austrians from the Sardinians, and so terrified the 
king, Victor Amadeus, that he consented to a disadvantageous peace, 
by which he surrendered Savoy and Nice to the Trench, gave up six 
fortresses to the general, and submitted to the oppressive condition of 
allowing the French army to march through his land at any time. By 
these and other oppressive conditions, the country became entirely de- 
pendent upon France, so that upon the king's death, which took place 
soon after, his son, Charles Emanuel (1796 — 1802), surrendered Pied- 
mont to the enemy, and settled himself and his family in Sardinia. 
The course of Napoleon's victories in Upper Italy was equally rapid. 
May 10, After the memorable passage of the bridge of Lodi, he 
1796. marched into Austrian Milan, subjected the Lombard 

towns, and so terrified the smaller princes by the success of his arms 
and his insolence, that they were only too happy to make peace with 
the victor at any price. Napoleon extorted large sums of money, 
and valuable pictures, treasures of art and manuscripts, from the 
dukes of Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, &c. He behaved as the 
Boman generals, with whose lives he was acquainted from the 
descriptions of Plutarch, had once done ; he enriched the French 
capital with the productions of the mind, that he might please the 
vain and spectacle loving Parisians. He supported the weak Direc- 
tory with the extorted supplies of money. 

"Wurmser now took the place of the old Beaulieu. But he also 
was defeated at Castiglione, and afterwards besieged in 
Mantua. The army under Alvinzi that was sent to his 
relief sustained three defeats (at Areola, Bivoli, La Favo- 
February, rata), by which the whole Austrian force in Italy was de- 
1797- stroyed, dispersed, or captured. This compelled the 

gallant Wurmser to deliver up Mantua to the glorious victor. Buo- 
naparte, respecting the courage of his enemy, permitted a free retreat 
to the grey-headed marshal, his staff, and a part of the brave garrison. 
Pope Pius VI., terrified at these rapid successes, hastened to purchase 

Bb 



370 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

the peace of Tolentino by cessions of territory, sums of 

February 19. i i x- x 

money, and works 01 art. 

Archduke Charles now assumed the command of the Austrian 
army in Italy. But he also was compelled to a disastrous retreat, and 
was pursued by Buonaparte as far as Klagenfurt with the view of 
falling upon Vienna. The emperor Francis, anxious for the fate of 
his capital, allowed himself to be persuaded by female influence to 
conclude the disadvantageous preliminary peace of Leobon, at the very 
April 18, moment when, by the non-arrival of the expected rein- 
1797- forcements, and the threatening movements of the Tyro- 

lese, Stirians, and Carinthians, the position of the French army was 
becoming critical. About the time this treaty of peace was concluded, 
a popular insurrection arose in the rear of the French army in the 
territory of the republic of Venice, in consequence of which many 
Frenchmen were murdex^ed in Verona and its neighbourhood, and 
even the sick and wounded in the hospitals were not spared. This 
was taken advantage of by Napoleon to destroy the Venetian republic. 
The cowardice of the aristocratic councillors, who, instead of offering 
a brave resistance and falling with honour, humbly implored the 
grace of the proud conqueror, and surrendered the government to a 
democratic council, facilitated the enterprise. As early as May, the 
French marched into Venice, carried off the ships and the stores of the 
arsenal, robbed the churches, galleries, and libraries, of their choicest 
ornaments and most valued treasures, and kept possession of the 
town till the negotiations with Austria were so far advanced, that 
October 17, the peace of Campo Formio, by which Upper Italy fell 
1797. into the hands of France under the name of the Cisal- 

pine Republic, was concluded. Austria, who by this peace also 
surrendered Belgium to the French republic and consented to the 
cession of the left bank of the Rhine with Mayence, received the 
territory of Venice together with Dalmatia, as a recompense for this 
loss. The princes, prelates, and nobles, who suffered by this abandon- 
ment of the farther Rhineland, were to be indemnified on the right 
bank of the river, and this, as well as all other points relating to 
Germany, were to be settled at the Congress at Rastadt. Napoleon 
December, opened this congress himself, and then returned to Paris 
1797. w here he was received with acclamations. 

§ 496. Gracchus Babeuf. The Royalists. — The reign of the 
five directors, among whom La Reveillere-Lepeaux (founder of the 
Society of the Theo-Philanthropists, Friends of God and Men), and 
Carnot, possessed the greatest influence, was detested by the violent 
republicans as well as by the royalists, and had, consequently, to 
sustain the attacks of both parties. The first attempt to overthrow it 
was made by the republicans, under the guidance of Gracchus Babeuf, 
who, like the Roman tribune whose name he had assumed, wished to 



FRANCE UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 371 

establish an equalization of property, and a new division of lands. He 
was joined by some of the old Jacobins, particularly by Drouet. The 
conspiracy was discovered. After some legal proceedings, which 
attracted a great deal of attention, Babeuf commanded his breast to 
be pierced by a dagger ; the others were either executed or banished. 
But greater than this was the danger with which the directoral govern- 
ment was threatened by the royalists. When, in accordance with the 
charter of the constitution, at the expiration of the first year, a third 
part of the council vacated their seats, and were replaced by a fresh 
election, the royalists, who had founded the club of Clichy, succeeded, 
almost entirely, in returning people of their own way of thinking 
to the legislative assembly. Among them was Pichegru, who, as 
commander of the Rhine army, had been connected with the emi- 
grants, and now, as president of the Council of the Five Hundred, was 
seeking to effect the restoration of the king. This caused anxiety to 
the republicans in the Directory and in the legislative chamber. 
They accordingly sought assistance from Buonaparte. The latter 
dispatched a division of his army to Paris, under the conduct of the 
shrewd Bernadotte and the gallant Augereau, ostensibly to convey 
thither the conquered standards, but in reality to assist the Directors 
September 4, against the royalists. On the 18th Fructidor, Augereau 
1797- surrounded the Tuilleries with his troops, and ordered the 

royalist deputies to be arrested ; upon which, eleven members of the 
Council of Ancients, forty-two of the Five Hundred (among them 
Pichegru), and two Directors, were sentenced to deportation. The 
royalist elections were then declared invalid, the returned emigrants 
again banished, and many journals suppressed. The directoral 
government, however, possessed neither respect nor confidence. 
Trade, industry, and agriculture fell into decay, and the national 
finances were in a ddapidated state. At the commencement of the - 
Revolution, the government had ordered paper money to be prepared, 
for the security and guarantee of which they assigned the confiscated 
property of the Church and of the emigrants. These notes were 
called assignats. A want of confidence in the stability of the revolu- 
tionary government soon produced a depreciation of this paper 
money, especially as the increasing number of assignats rendered 
their realization every day more improbable. During the reign of 
terror, no one refused an acceptance that was commanded by law, 
and the assignats had thus a compulsatory circulation. But after the 
fall of Robespierre, and the decline of terrorism, this paper money 
sank daily in value ; and, despite the efforts made by the directoral 
government to restore the confidence of the people by discharging 
the old assignats and issuing fresh bdls (mandates, inscriptions), the 
new notes were soon as worthless as the old ones. The losses were 
enormous ; property had fled from the rich and the illustrious to the 

b b 2 



372 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

lower classes. To defray the expenses of war and other outlays, the 
Directory established a complete system of plunder in the conquered 
countries. 

§ 497. The Republicans in Italy. Changes in Switzeeland. — 
Italy and Switzerland were particularly exposed to the insolence and 
rapacity of the directoral government. In the winter of 1797 repub- 
lican commotions took place in Rome and other parts of the States 
of the Church, which were occasioned by French influence. During 
the suppression of these by the papal troops, general Duphot, who was 
present in Rome, lost his life. This afforded the French government 
an opportunity of ordering Berthier to march with an army into 
February, Rome. A tree of liberty was erected in the midst of the 
179H- Roman Forum, the Pope was deprived of his temporal 

power, which was made over to a republican government, consisting of 
consuls, senators, and tribunes. The French then imposed severe 
military levies and imposts upon the town, and carried off the most 
valuable works of art to Paris ; and when this proceeding occasioned 
some popular commotions, the grey-headed pope, Pius VI., was led 
A 7oo awav to Paris, where he died in the following year, and 

the cardinals were subjected to severe persecutions. Lucca 
and Genoa also received democratical constitutions, and paid for them 
with their treasures. But the most remarkable occurrences took 
place in Naples. The hard-hearted and cowardly king Ferdinand 
governed here, and devoted himself entirely to hunting and fishing, 
whilst he left the business of the state to his impetuous wife, Caroline, 
a daughter of Maria Theresa, who, on her side, allowed herself to be 
entirely guided by the notorious courtezan, Lady Hamilton, the wife 
of the English ambassador. Filled with deadly hate against France 
and the regicide republicans, and informed that the European powers 
had determined upon a fresh campaign, the queen persuaded her 
husband to allow a Neapolitan army, under the command of the 
Austrian general Mack, to march into the States of the Church. The 
French were at first driven out of Rome, and the town taken posses- 
sion of; but hi a few days they again returned, under Championnet, 
put the Neapolitans to flight, and marched into the territory of their 
enemy. Confused and helpless, the Neapolitan court fled to Sicily, 
November ordered its own fleet to be set on fire, and abandoned the 
December, capital and the whole country to the conquerors. But 
1798. ^.] ie p p U ] ace f Naples, excited by the monks and clergy, 

now arose. Troops of ragamuffins (lazzaroni), united with peasants 
and galley-slaves, took possession of Naples, and spread such alarm, 
; bat the viceroy fled to Sicily and Mack sought protection among the 
French. Championnet then marched over blood and corpses into the 
January, stubbornly defended town, and established the Partheno- 

1799- peian Republic. All the respectable and educated Neapo- 



FRANCE UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 373 

litans who were inspired with any feeling of patriotism, delighted to 
escape from years of kingly and priestly despotism, attached them- 
selves with enthusiasm to the new order of things. 

In the year 1798 Switzerland also experienced a change in her con- 
stitution. Bern, and its associate, Vaud, were governed by an aristo- 
cratic council, all the members of which belonged to patrician families. 
The Vaudois, excited by the French republicans, seized their arms for 
the purpose of freeing themselves from the government of the Ber- 
nese. But as they were not a match for their opponents, they claimed 
the assistance of France ; upon which general Brune took possession 
of Bern, made himself master of the rich treasures and of the arsenal, 
and extorted large sums from the land by military levies. Supported 
by the democratic party, with Ochs of Basle and Laharpe of Vaud at 
their head, the French converted Switzerland into the single and 
indivisible Helvetic Republic, with a form of policy borrowed from 
the directoral government of France. It was in vain that the Ca- 
tholic cantons on the lake of Lucerne, excited by their priests, opposed 
themselves to this arrangement and took up arms ; they were de- 
feated, and compelled to conform to the new system. Geneva was 
united to France. 

§ 498. The War oe the Second Coalition. — These proceedings, 
and the simultaneous expedition of Napoleon to Egypt and Syria 
(§ 499), produced a fresh coalition of the three great European 
powers, Russia, England, and Austria, against France. Russia had 
been governed since the year 1796 by Paul, the eldest son of Cathe- 
rine, a prince with a mind somewhat deranged, who cherished the 
bitterest hatred against the Revolution ; and who, as a great reverencer 
of the order of Malta, to the Grand Mastership of which he had had him- 
self appointed, saw, in the capture of that island by Napoleon (§ 499), 
a cause for war. England feared danger to her foreign possessions 
from the Egyptian expedition, and scattered money with a liberal 
hand to raise up fresh enemies against France. Austria was at vari- 
ance with the directoral government, because the house of the French 
ambassador in Vienna, Bernadotte, had been broken open, and the 
tricolour flag torn down and burnt, during a popular festival, without 
the Austrian government having afforded the required satisfaction. 

"VVar was waged, at the same time, in Germany, in Italy, in 
Switzerland, and in the Netherlands. After the French had been 
March 25, defeated at Stockach by the archduke Charles, and forced 
1799. over the Rhine, the French ambassadors (Roberjot, Bon- 

nier, Jean Debry),who had hitherto conducted the affairs of peace in 
Rastadt, and rendered themselves universally odious by their pride 
and insolence, wished to return. But scarcely had they left Rastadt 
. .. at the commencement of night, before they were attacked, 

in defiance of all the rights of nations, by Szekler hussars, 



374 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

robbed of tbeir papers, and treated in such a way that two died 
immediately, and Jean Debry, who was severely wounded, only saved 
bis life by crawling into a ditch. This deed excited universal disgust, 
and was taken advantage of by the Directory to excite the people to 
vengeance. In Italy, also, the French had the disadvantage. The 
Eussians, under Suwarrow, conquered the Cisalpine Bepublic in a few 
weeks, after Moreau had been defeated at Cassano, and Macdonald, 
t 17 wuo ^ a( ^ ^ ec ^ ^ ne French army out of Naples, at Trebia, 

famous for the victory of Hannibal. The bloody defeat 
August 5. £ ^e French in the battle of Novi, where the young- 
general Joubert died the death of a hero, completed the loss of Italy. 
This change in affairs was a death-blow to the Parthenopeian Ee- 
public. Scarcely had the French army left Naples, before the bar- 
barous cardinal Euffo stormed the city with bands of 
June 13. • . 

Calabrian peasants and exasperated lazzaroni, and the 

court returned from Sicily. The republicans of Naples were now 
visited by a frightful punishment. Supported by Admiral Nelson, 
who lay with his fleet before the city, and who, seduced by the charms 
of Lady Hamilton, allowed himself to be made the instrument of an 
ignominious vengeance, the priesthood and the royal government 
practised deeds, before which the atrocities of the French reign of 
terror retreat into obscurity. After the murderings and plunderings 
of the lazzaroni were over, the business of the judge, the executioner, 
and the gaoler commenced. Every partisan, adherent, or favourer of 
the republican institutions was persecuted. Upwards of 4000 of the 
most respectable and refined men and females died upon the scaffold 
or in frightful dungeons. For it was precisely the noblest portion 
of the nation, who wished to redeem the people from their degrada- 
tion and ignorance, that had joined themselves with patriotic enthu- 
siasm to the new system. The grey-haired prince, Caraccioli, the 
former confidant of Ferdinand and the friend of Nelson, was tied to a 
sail-yard and plunged, loaded with weights, into the waves. The 
republican government was also dissolved in Eome, whereupon the 
new pope, Pius VII., again took possession of the Vatican. 

After the conquest of Italy, Suwarrow surmounted the pathless 
icebergs of the Alps, with the purpose of driving the French out of 
Switzerland. The Eussian army had incredible difficidties and dangers 
to encounter in this expedition. Combats were sustained on the 
Gothard and at the Devil's Bridge against the enemy and natural diffi- 
culties that may be classed with the most daring feats in the world's 
history. But despite all their efforts, the Eussians, owing to not 
being sufficiently supported by the Austrians, were defeated by the 
September 25, French in the battle of Zurich. (During the capture of 
26, 1799. Zurich, winch followed, Lavater was mortally Avounded.) 
Suwarrow conducted the remains of his army across the frozen 



FRANCE UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 375 

M 1800 h^g^s of the Grisons to their home, where he shortly 
after died. The simultaneous attempt of the English to 
drive the French out of the Netherlands and restore the Stadtholder 
had a disastrous termination. The unskilful general, the duke of 
York, purchased the retreat of himself and his army by a disgraceful 
October, composition, without troubling himself about his allies, 

1799. the Russians. This ignoble and selfish behaviour of the 

English and Austrians exasperated the Russian emperor, Paul, so 
much against the allies, that he retired from the coalition. 

§ 499. Buonaparte in Egypt and Stbia. — During these trans- 
actions Buonaparte found himself in Egypt, at the head of a consider- 
able army. In the June of ^1798 he had sailed from the island of 
Malta, which had been wrested from the knights of St. John by 
treachery, towards the land of the Nile. The chief inducements to 
this strange and adventurous undertaking were the wish to inspire 
the excitable French nation with enthusiasm for himself by extra- 
ordinary actions, the desire of glory, and the thought of being able to 
weaken the maritime power of England, and to threaten her posses- 
sions in the East Indies from Egypt. After his disembarkation at 
Alexandria, the whole of the Erench fleet at Aboukir, owing to the 
carelessness of the admiral, was cut off and carried away by the 
English naval hero, Nelson ; and Napoleon was in consequence 
obliged to make arrangements for a longer stay. In July he 
marched from Alexandria through the Egyptian desert to Cairo. The 
distress of the army, unprovided with water or sufficient necessaries, 
July 21, i n the burning heat, was very great. In the battle of the 

1798. Pyramids, "from the tops of which 4000 years looked 

down upon the combatants," the Mamalukes, who at that time 
swayed Egypt under the Turkish government, were defeated ; where- 
upon Buonaparte marched into Cairo, and established a new govern- 
ment, police, and taxation, upon the European pattern, and ordered 
the curiosities of this wonderful land to be examined, and its monu- 
ments and antiquities to be collected and described, by the artists 
and men of learning who accompanied his army. In the meanwhile, 
although Buonaparte and his troops treated the religious customs of 
the Mahommedans with every possible forbearance, and showed all 
outward respect to their priests, mosques, ceremonies, and customs, 
fanaticism was, nevertheless, raging in the bosoms of the Mussul- 
men, and rendered the rule of the Christians detestable to them. 
This hatred was increased when the Erench general levied taxes and 
imposts ; and the Porte, which would not allow itself to be deceived 
by Napoleon's false shows of friendship and devotion, called upon the 
Mahommedans to fight against the Christians. A dreadful insurrec- 
October21, tion broke out in Cairo, which could only be suppressed 
1798. ^th difficulty by the superiority of European tactics, 



376 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

after nearly 6000 Mahommedans had been slain. Napoleon made 
February, use of the victory to extort money, and then marched 
1799. with his Turkish troops against Syria. After the con- 

quest of Jaffa, where he ordered 2000 Arnauts, whom he had a 
second time taken prisoners, to be shot as perjured, he proceeded to 
the siege of Jean d'Acre. It was there that the fortune 
of Napoleon met with its first rebuff. The Turks, pro- 
vided with artillery by the English admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, re- 
pelled the assaults of the enemy, despite their wonderful valour. At 
the same time, a Turkish army threatened the European soldiers in 
the interior of the country. The former was, indeed, defeated and 
dispersed by Junot at Nazareth, and at Mount Tabor by Kleber ; 
nevertheless, upon the plague breaking out among his troops, Napo- 
leon found himself compelled to give up Acre and to commence a 
retreat. The horses were laden with the sick ; the soldiers suffered 
the most dreadful privations ; the dangers and distresses of the war 
were frightful. Napoleon shared all the fatigues with the meanest of 
his army ; he is even said to have visited a hospital filled with those 
sick of the plague. He again reached Cairo in June, and in the 
following month defeated a Turkish army of three times 
u y " his number, at Aboukir. A short time after this, he 

learnt the disasters of the Erench in Italy from some newspapers ; 
and the intelligence produced such an effect upon him, that he deter- 
mined upon returning to France. He quietly made his preparations 
for departure with the greatest expedition. After transferring the 
command of the Egyptian army to Kleber, Napoleon sailed from the 
harbour of Alexandria with two frigates and a few small transports, 
and about 500 followers, and, guided by the star of his fortunes, 
October 9 reached the coast of France undiscovered by the English, 
1799. and landed at Erejus amidst the acclamations of the people. 

§ 500. The Eighteenth Beumaire. — TJpon his arrival in Paris, 
Napoleon embraced the resolution of overthrowing the directoral 
government, which had lost all authority and consideration. "With 
this purpose, he made himself secure of the officers and troops that 
were in Paris, and consulted with Sieyes, one of the directors, and 
his own brother, Lucien Buonaparte, who had been elected president 
of the Eive Hundred, on the means of carrying his plan into execu- 
tion. Lucien transferred the sittings of the council to St. Cloud, for 
the purpose of bringing the members within the power of the 
soldiers. There, Napoleon first attempted to win over the members 
to his plans by persuasion ; when he found that he could not succeed 
in this, but, rather, that he was overwhelmed with threats and 
reproaches, he commanded his grenadiers to clear the room with 
levelled bayonets. The republicans, who presented a bold front to 
the danger, were at length compelled to yield to superior force, and 



GOVERNMENT OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 377 

sought their safety through doors and windows. This done, a 
November 9 commission of fifty persons was appointed to draw up a 
1799- fresh constitution. Thus ended the violent procedure of 

the 18th Brumaire, in consequence of which Napoleon Buonaparte 
took the conduct of affairs into his own strong hands. 



C. GOVEKNMENT OE NAPOLEON BITONAPAKTE. 

I. THE CONSULATE (1800 1804). 

§ 501. According to the consular constitution, the power of the 
state was divided in the following manner : — 1. To the senate, which 
consisted of eighty members, belonged the privilege of selecting from 
the list of names sent in by the departments the members of the 
legislative power, and the chief officials and judges. 2. The legis- 
lative power was divided (a) into the tribunate, which numbered 
one hundred members, and whose office it was to examine and debate 
upon the proposals of the government ; and (b) the legislative bodies, 
who had only to receive or reject these proposals unconditionally. 
3. The government consisted of three consuls, who were elected for 
ten years. Of these consuls, the first, Buonaparte, exercised the 
powers of government, properly so called ; whilst the second and 
third consuls (Cambaceres and Lebrun) were merely placed at his 
side as advisers. Buonaparte, as first consul, surrounded himself 
Avith a state council and a ministry, for which he selected the most 
talented and experienced men. Talleyrand, the dexterous diplomatist, 
was minister of the exterior ; the astute Eouche superintended the 
police ; Berthier held the staff of general. The Code Napoleon, in 
the composition of which the most renowned lawyers of Erance were 
employed, is an illustrious proof of the sagacity of the state council. 

§ 502. Makengo and Hohenlinden. — After the arrangement of 
the new constitution, Buonaparte wrote a letter with his own hand 
to the king of England, in which he made an offer of peace ; he did 
the same to the emperor. But this unusual proceeding found little 
sympathy. A cold answer, in measured terms, spoke of the restora- 
tion of the Bourbons, and of a return to the ancient boundaries. 
The contrast between the apparent warmth, openness, and magna- 
nimity of Napoleon, and the repulsive coldness of the cabinets of 
London and Vienna, excited the greatest enthusiasm and military 
ardour among the fiery Erench. Napoleon was more successful in his 
attempts to gain over the czar of Bussia to his cause. Paul's love 
for soldiers, and his disgust at the Austrians and English, who would 
not exchange the captured Bussians, were dexterously made use of by 
Napoleon. He sent some thousands of these prisoners, fresh armed and 
clothed, back to their homes, without ransom. By this means he won 



378 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

the heart of the emperor, who, with all his eccentricities, possessed a 
chivalrous spirit ; so that the latter entered into a friendly alliance 
with Buonaparte, and withdrew himself entirely from his former 
allies. 

The Chief Consul now assembled a large army, with all secrecy, in 
the neighbourhood of the Lake of Geneva, and undertook the wonder- 
ful passage of the great St. Bernhard with the main body, 
May, 1800. ^^ other divisions penetrated into Italy by the Sim- 
plon, St. Gothard, and other passes. This bold undertaking, with its 
difficulties and dangers, recals to mind the heroic age of Hannibal. 
The army marched past the Hospice, placed in the midst of snow 
and icebergs, down into the valley of the Dora Baltea, where the 
fortress of Bard, which was occupied by the Austrians, appeared to 
present insurmountable difficulties. But Napoleon's genius discovered 
an escape. The troops surmounted the neighbouring heights by a 
sheep-path, whdst the artillery was conveyed secretly under the guns 
of the fort by an artifice. In this way the French descended, quite 
unexpectedly, upon Upper Italy, at the very moment when the 
Austrians had compelled Genoa to surrender, and were in possession 
of the whole country. But the position of affairs was soon changed. 
June 9 Five days after the fall of Genoa, the Austrians received 

June 1 4. a defeat at Montebello, and a short time after the battle of 
Marengo was fought near Alexandria, where the Austrians under 
Melas were completely routed. The unexpected arrival of the brave 
Desaix from Egypt produced this change, and snatched the victory 
that was deemed secure from the hands of the Austrians. Desaix, 
one of the greatest and most noble men of the time of the Revolution, 
died the death of a hero at Marengo. Milan and Lombardy were the 
prize of the day. At the same time, an army under Moreau had 
forced its way into Swabia and Bavaria, driven back the Austrians in 
several encounters, and compelled them to a truce ; but it was the 
glorious march of Macdonald and Moncey over the icy 
Grisons, and Moreau' s splendid victory in the bloody 
December 3. fi e id f Hohenlinden, that first compelled the Austrians 
to accept, in the peace of Luneville, the conditions that 
had been entered into at Campo Dorado, and to acknow- 
ledge the valleys of the Rhine and the Etsch as the boundaries of the 
French empire. The formation of an Italian republic under the 
presidentship of Buonaparte, and the indemnification of the losses of 
the German princes and of the imperial estates, by the secularized 
Church property and the abolished imperial cities on the right side 
of the Rhine, were the most important articles in the peace of Lune- 
ville. The arrangements that were made two years later in the 
territories of the German States, by the so-called decree of the 



GOVERNMENT OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 379 

February 25, Imperial Diet, was the first step towards the dissolution 
1803. of the German empire, and the establishment of sove- 

reign kingdoms and principalities. 

§ 503. The Peace oe Amiens. — After the peace of Luneville, 
England alone retained her arms, and as the Russian emperor, Paul, 
out of hatred to the selfish and insolent islanders, had only a short 
time before renewed the alliance with Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, 
for an armed neutrality (§ 456), and by this means stirred up enemies 
against the British in the Baltic, the English people also were longing 
for rest and refreshment. Negotiations for peace were accordingly 
entered into, but were attended for a long time by no result, inas- 
much as the parties could not agree respecting Egypt. Eor Kleber, 
angry as he was at Napoleon's retreat (§ 499), had successfully 
maintained himself against the Turks and the English, and in the 
March 20, battle near Heliopolis, had defeated an army of six times 

1800. Ms numbers. But after he had fallen by the dagger of a 
fanatical Mussulman, in the garden of his palace at Cairo, on the day 
of the battle of Marengo, the Erench army, under the conduct of his 
incompetent successor, Menon, who had embraced Islam, fell gradually 
into such distress, that the English entertained the hope of com- 
pelling it to surrender, and consequently delayed the negotiations for 
March 21, peace. It was not until the gallant English general, 

1801. Abercrombie, had fallen in the battle of Canopus, that 
they were convinced that neither their own land force, which was 
composed of recruits from all nations, nor the undisciplined Turkish 
squadrons, were in a condition to overcome the tactics of the Erench 
September, i n Egypt. A treaty was concluded, by virtue of which, 

1801. the Erench army, 24,000 strong, with arms, munitions, 
and all the treasures of science and art, were conveyed back to Erance 
in English vessels. This was the preliminary to the peace of Amiens, 
March 27, D y which the English promised to surrender the greater 

1802. p ar t of then foreign conquests, and to relinquish the 
island of Malta, of which they had gained possession, to the knights 
of St. John. This peace, which was concluded with great precipi- 
tation on the part of England, met with violent opposition in the 
country. The press raised its voice loudly against it, and adopted at 
the same time a hostile tone towards Napoleon. These attacks irri- 
tated the Eirst Consul, who could bear neither censure nor opposi- 
tion ; he replied in a similar strain by the Erench government paper 
(Moniteur). This occasioned a mutual ill-temper, which promised a 
speedy renewal of hostilities, and the English accordingly delayed the 
evacuation of Malta, and the execution of the disadvantageous condi- 
tions of the peace. The dread of Russia had passed, since Paul had 
met with a violent death. The cruelty, the arbitrary measures, and 
the gloomy suspicions of this emperor, had increased to such an 



380 TIIE LATEST PERIOD. 

extent, that there could be no longer a doubt that his mind was 
incurably affected. A conspiracy was therefore formed amongst those 
around him, the threads of Avhich were guided by the powerful count 
Pahlen. The result of this was, that the emperor Paul was attacked 
in his bedchamber by Suboff, Benningsen, and others, and when he 
refused the required abdication of the throne, he was cruelly strangled, 
and his son Alexander proclaimed as his successor. Under 
' these circumstances, the peace of Amiens had no per- 
manence. At the expiration of a year the English again 
' declared war, and Pitt re-entered the ministry. A short 
time before, Napoleon had reduced Switzerland to the same state of 
subjection as Holland and Italy. By the so-called Act of Mediation, 
February ne h&d. effected such a change in the constitution of the 
1803. Helvetic republic, that the cantons had again become 

independent, but a Landamman and a Diet represented the confede- 
ration as a collective state. 

§ 504. The new Court and the Concordat. — Buonaparte was 
at first engaged in reconciling the old with the new, in combining 
the results of the Revolution with the forms and manners of the 
monarchical period. But he very soon made known his preference for 
the ancient system by the restoration of all the former arrangements 
and customs. The times and fashions of a previous period, the forms 
of the old etiquette, the elegance of the kingly period, were soon to 
be seen at the court of the First Consul in the Tuilleries. An 
aristocratic demeanour, a dignified bearing, and polished manners, 
were again held in estimation, as the advantages of good society. 
The social gifts of his wife, Josephine, the beauty and ainiabdity of 
his step-children (Eugene and Hortense Beauharnais) and sisters 
(Pauline, Elise), assisted him in this matter'. The reductions in 

1 Genealogical Table of the Buonaparte family of Ajaccio, in Corsica : — 
Charles Buonaparte -Laetitia, nee Ramolini, a.d. 1736, at Rome. 



1. Joseph B., 2. Napoleon B., 3. Lucieu B., 4. Eliza Bacciochi, 

Count Survilliers, a.d. 17G9— 1821. Prince Canino, a.d. 1777—1820. 

a.d. 1/G7-1844. a.d. 1772—1841. 

5. Louis B., G. Pauline Borghese, 7- Caroline Murat, 

Duke of St. Leu, a.d. 1781 — 1825. a.d. 1782— 1839. 

a.d. 1778— 184G. 

8. Hieronynius B., 

Born 1784, 

Duke of Monfort. 

Napoleon Buonaparte, Josephine Beauharnais, nee Tascher de la Pagerie, 

a.d. 1763— 1814. 

Eugene, Duke of Leuchtcnberg, Hortense, Duchess of St. Leu, Louis B. 

a.d. 1781—1824. a.d. 1837. Louis Napoleon, 

President of the French Republic* 



GOVERNMENT OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 381 

the emigrant lists brought back many royalists to their homes, and 
the favour shown to them made them courteous and pliant in the 
service of the new court. Madame de Stael (daughter of Necker) 
collected, as in the old time, a circle of accomplished and illustrious 
men in her saloon. The vanity of the French favoured Napoleon's 
efforts ; when he instituted the order of the Legion of Honour, 
republicans and royalists grasped eagerly at the new plaything of 
human weakness. 

One of the first cares of the Consul was the restoration of 
Christian worship in the French churches. After he had abolished 
the republican festivals (10th August, 21st January), and introduced 
July 15, the observance of the Sabbath, negotiations were opened 

1801. with the Soman court, which at length led to the con- 
clusion of the Concordat. By this Concordat the French clergy lost 

their early independence, and were subjected to the head 
of the Church as well as to the ruler of the state. 
No less attention did Napoleon devote to the affairs of education ; 
he, however, particularly patronized the establishments for practical 
science, as the Polytechnic School in Paris. An arbitrary and power- 
loving man, Napoleon wished to guide and govern every thing him- 
self, and thus became the creator of the pernicious system of centrali- 
zation, by which the vital circulation was suppressed, and the seeds 
of death were planted in the whole body of the state. 

§ 505. Conspiracies. — Napoleon possessed a despotic nature, that 
found no pleasure in a life of state freedom, he accordingly daily cur- 
tailed the liberty and political rights of the citizens, persecuted the 
Jacobins and republicans whom he called "Ideologists," and reposed 
his confidence in his guard, and in a vigorous triple police, under the 
superintendence of the crafty Fouche. Repeated conspiracies against 
the life of the First Consul, sometimes undertaken by the republicans 
and sometimes by the royalists, were always followed by fresh restric- 
tions and a more rigorous system of espionage. The most desperate 
undertaking of this kind was the attempt, by means of the so-called 
infernal machine, — a cask filled with gunpowder, bullets, and inflam- 
December24, niable materials, to blow up Buonaparte on his way to 
1800. the opera-house, an attempt which Napoleon escaped by 

the rapidity with which his coachman was driving, but which destroyed 
many houses and killed several people. In consequence of this atro- 
cious deed a great number of Jacobins were condemned to deporta- 
tion, though it afterwards turned out that the plot was undertaken 
by the royalists. Still more dangerous and extensive were the con- 
spiracies against Napoleon, when the office of consul was conferred 
August 2, u P on kim for life by the voice of the people, with the 

1802. privilege of naming his successor. By this means the 



382 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Bourbons were cut off from the last hopes of a return, and the emi- 
grants accordingly left no means untried of destroying him. The 
desperate George Cadoudal, and Pichegru, who was residing in Eng- 
land, and who was as strong as a giant, allowed themselves to be em- 
ployed as tools. They conveyed themselves secretly to France, but 
were discovered, and arrested with about forty confederates. Before 
their fate was decided, Napoleon allowed himself to be hurried into the 
commission of a revolting crime. It had been represented to him 
that the duke d'Enghien, the chivalrous grandson of the prince of 
Conde, was the soul of all the royalist conspiracies. Accordingly, the 
young nobleman, who was residing at Ettenheim, a small towu of 
Baden, was seized upon at Napoleon's command, by a troop of armed 
men, conducted with the greatest haste through Strasburg to Paris, 
condemned to death by a kuiTied court-martial, and, despite a mag- 
March 21, nanimous defence, shot in the trenches of Vincennes. 
1804. This deed, which placed Buonaparte on a level with the 

men of the reign of terror in 1793, revolted all Europe, and put an end 
to the praises of his admirers. The poet Chateaubriand, the author 
of the " Genius of Christianity," resigned the official situation that 
had been conferred upon him by Buonaparte's sister, Eliza, and 
retired to Switzerland. The fate of the conspirators was shortly after 
decided upon. Pichegru had already died a violent death in prison, 
whether by his own hand or that of another is uncertain : George 
Cadoudal, with eleven confederates, ascended the guillotine. General 
Moreau, who was implicated, retired into voluntary banishment in 
America. 

II. NAPOLEON, EMPEROR (a.D. 1S04 — 1814). 
1. TEE EMPIRE. 

§ 506. The royalist conspiracies were made use of by Buonaparte to 
establish an hereditary monarchy. At the instigation of his adherents, 
the making over the hereditary dignity of emperor to Napoleon was 
proposed to the Tribunate, sanctioned by the senate, and confirmed by 
the whole people by the subscription of their names. Whilst the 
minds of men were still painfully excited by the late bloody execu- 
tions, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the Erench, 
' and at the end of the year solemnly anointed by the pope 
in the church of Notre Dame. The crown, however, he placed on his 
own head, as well as on that of his wife, Josephine, who knelt before 
him. This magnificent coronation appeared to be the conclusion of 
the Revolution, since the whole ancient system, for the extinction of 
which thousands of human lives had been sacrificed, gradually 
returned. The new emperor surrounded his throne with a brilliant 
court, in which the former titles, orders, and gradations of rank were 



NAPOLEON, EMPEROR. 383 

revived under different names. He himself certainly retained his old 
military simplicity, but the members of his family were made princes 
and princesses ; his generals became marshals ; the devoted servants 
and promoters of his plans were connected to the throne as the great 
officers of the crown, or as senators with large incomes. The estab- 
lishment of a new feudal nobdity, with the old titles of princes, 
dukes, counts, barons, completed the splendid edifice of a magnificent 
imperial court, which soon outshone the courts of princes. The 
republican arrangement gradually disappeared. The old calendar was 
again restored ; the new nobility were at liberty to establish the right 
of primogeniture, the press was placed under a censorship, and civil 
freedom more and more restricted. Any opposition was intolerable 
to the ruler ; for this reason he first reduced the number of tribunes 
to fifty, and then abolished the whole tribunate. Obedi- 
ence was henceforth the only thing; and France was 
placed under a tyranny more severe than that of the ancient monarchy. 
But then the tyrant was a great man, and therefore the people willingly 
submitted to him ; and hardly as the rigorous conscription, the severe 
restrictions upon trade, and the heavy taxation might press upon 
them, the burden was the more lightly borne, inasmuch as the great 
ends attained by the Revolution — equality before the law, the pea- 
sants' right of property in the sod and other possessions, remained 
untouched. Industry made great progress, civd arts and trades 
received a vast impidse ; and an unaccustomed prosperity made itself 
every where visible. Magnificent roads, like those over the Alps, 
canals, bridges, and improvements of all kinds, are, to the present 
day, eloquent memorials of the restless activity of this remarkable 
man. Splendid palaces, majestic bridges, and noble streets, arose in 
Paris, every thing great or magnificent that art had produced was 
united in the Louvre, the capital of Prance glittered with a splendour 
that had never before been witnessed. The university was arranged 
upon a most magnificent footing, and appointed the supreme court of 
supervision and control over the whole system of schools and educa- 
tion. The glory that was conferred by the emperor upon the nation 
rendered every yoke fight to the latter ; she forgot that the voice of 
freedom was dying away amidst the clash of arms and the clang 
of trumpets, and that the high-flown tone of bulletins, and the 
ornate language of the senate and legislative body, were destructive 
of truth and justice. 

2. AUSTEELITZ, PKESBEEG. COTEDEEATIOX OE THE EHI^E. 

§ 507. The English took advantage of the renewal of the war with 
Prance to make an unexpected seizure of Dutch and Prench ships, 
and then sought to unite Eussia and Austria in a new coalition. 



384 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Napoleon, on the other hand, ordered his troops to 
advance upon the Weser, and to occupy the electorate of 
Hanover, which belonged to the king of England. The Hanoverian 
people and army were resolved to hazard life and property in defence 
of their country ; but the selfish aristocracy and officials preferred a 
disgraceful capitulation which surrendered the whole country to the 
French, to fighting. The gallant army was forced to retreat across 
the Elbe, and there to disband. Arms, munitions of Avar, and 
splendid horses, fell into the hands of the French, who forthwith 
occupied the country with their troops, and exhausted it by military 
levies and exactions. The threatening attitude assumed by Napoleon 
in Hanover against the whole north, as well as his arbitrary proceed- 
ing in Holland, Italy, and other countries, were sources of anxiety to 
other powers. In Italy, not only was the Italian republic changed 
March 17, i^o the kingdom of Italy, and Eugene Beauharnais, the 
1805. son-in-law of the emperor, placed there as viceroy, but 

Napoleon also enlarged it by the addition of Parma, and gave Lucca 
to his sister Eliza, the wife of the Corsican, Bacciochi. In Spain and 
Germany, also, Napoleon acted in the same imperious and arbitrary 
manner. These, and other causes, united Bussia, Austria, and 
Sweden with England against France, and renewed the war with 
greater vigour. In Prussia, also, there was a strong party, headed 
by the high-spirited queen Louisa and prince Louis Ferdinand, in 
favour of an alliance with the united powers against Buonaparte ; 
but the three ministers, Haugwitz, Lucchesini, and Lombard, who 
were inclined to France, and utterly wanting in any feeling of 
patriotism, still possessed the confidence of the irresolute and 
peace-loving king. Thus Prussia remained neutral, to its own 
destruction. 

§ 508. Whilst the attention of all Europe was directed to the 
western coast of France, where Napoleon was fitting out ships of 
every kind with the greatest dUigence, and assembling a vast camp at 
Boulogne, with the purpose, as was believed, of effecting a landing on 
the English coast, he was making preparations, in all silence, for the 
memorable campaign of 1805. Never were Napoleon's talents for com- 
mand or his military genius displayed in a more briUiant light than in 
the plan of this campaign. Assured of the assistance of most of the 
princes of Southern Germany, Buonaparte crossed the Bhine in the 
autumn with seven divisions, commanded by his most experienced 
marshals, Ney, Lannes, Marmont, Soult, Murat, &c. ; and marched 
into Swabia ; whilst Bernadotte, disregarding Prussia's neutrality, 
pressed forward through the Brandenburg Margravate of Anspach- 
Bavreuth upon the Isar. This violation of his neutral position 
irritated the king, Frederick William III., to such a degree, that he 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. SS5 

entered into closer relationship with the allies, and assumed a threat- 
ening aspect, without, however, actually declaring war. The electors 
of Baden, Wirternberg, and Bavaria, on the other hand, strengthened 
with their troops the army of the too-powerful enemy, from whose 
grace they had as much to hope as they had to fear from his frowns. 
The dukes of Hessen, Nassau, &c, did the same. After Ney's suc- 
cessful engagement at Elchingen, the Austrian general, 
Mack, was shut up in TJlm, and cut off from the main 
army. Helpless, and despairing of deliverance, the incompetent 
commander commenced negotiations with the French, which termi- 
nated in the disgraceful capitulation of TJlm. By this 
arrangement 33,000 Austrians, including 13 generals, 
became prisoners of war. Covered with shame, the once-brave 
warriors marched before Napoleon, laid down their arms before the 
victor, placed forty banners at his feet, and delivered up sixty cannon 
with their horses. When too late, it was seen in Vienna that Mack 
was not equal to his lofty position, and he was deprived of his 
honour, his dignities, and the advantages of his office, by a court- 
martial. Napoleon's joy at this unexampled good fortune was, how- 
ever, diminished by the contemporaneous maritime victory of the 
English at Trafalgar, which annihilated the whole French 
fleet, but which also cost the life of the great naval hero, 
Nelson. 

§ 509. The war party had gained the upper hand in Prussia since 
the violation of the neutral territory by Bernadotte. The king 
renewed the bond of perpetual friendship with the sensitive emperor 
Alexander in the church of the garrison at Potsdam, over the coffin of 
Frederick the Great, at night, and then sent Haugwitz with threat- 
ening demands to Napoleon. The French emperor, in the mean time, 
proceeded along the Danube towards the Austrian states, not with- 
out many bloody engagements, of which the battles of Dimstein and 

, Stein against the Russians under Kutusoff and Bagration 

November 11. 

' were of especial importance. If the French found brave 

and circumspect opponents in the Russians in these encounters, they 

had the easier game in Austria. Murat took possession 

' of Vienna without the slightest trouble ; and the prince 

of Auersburg, who had orders either to defend the bridge over the 

Danube, which was fortified and filled with gunpowder, or to blow it 

into the air, allowed himself to be so completely deceived by the 

bold cunning of the French general, and by pretended negotiations of 

peace, that he surrendered it to the enemy uninjured and undefended. 

The irresolution of the emperor Francis, and the divisions between 

the Austrians and Russians, facilitated the victory of the French, 

who, laden with enormous booty, pursued the Austro-Russian army, 

c c 



386 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

in the midst of perpetual engagements, into Moravia. In Moravia, 
December 2, the battle of Austerlitz, in which three emperors were 
1JJ05. present, was fought on the day of the year in which the 

emperor was crowned, and in which the winter sun shone upon the 
most splendid of Napoleon's victories. The emperor Francis, wishing 
for the termination of the war, suffered himself to be persuaded to 
pay a humble visit to Napoleon in the French camp, and then con- 
sented to a truce which stipulated for the retreat of the Bussians 

_ , from the Austrian states. Upon this, negotiations were 

December 26. . r 

' commenced which terminated in the peace of Presburg. 

By this peace, Austria lost the territory of Venice, which was 
united to the kingdom of Italy ; Tyrol, which fell to Bavaria ; and a 
portion of Austria, of which the Briesgau and the lands of the Black 
Forest were allotted to Baden. Bavaria and "Wirtemberg received 
the rank of kingdoms ; Baden, that of an archduchy ; and all three 
were joined to the imperial house of Napoleon by the ties of relation- 
ship. The daughter of the new king, Mas Joseph of Bavaria, was 
married to the empei^or's adopted son-in-law, Eugene Beauharnois, 
in Wirtemberg ; Catherine, the noble daughter of a princely house, 
was obliged to consent to a marriage with Napoleon's frivolous 
brother, Hieronyinus, who had shortly before been separated from 
his citizen wife ; and in Baden, Charles, the grandson of the excellent 
archduke Frederick, was united to Stephanie Beauharnois, a niece of 
the empress Josephine, who had been adopted by Napoleon. The 
lands on the Lower Ehine were united into the archduchy of Cleve- 
Berg, with the capital, Dusseldorf, and presented to the emperor's 
brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. Holland also was compelled to 
exchange her republican constitution for a monarchy, and to beg a 
creature of Napoleon's for a ruler ; upon which, the French emperor 
named his brother Louis king of Holland. The royal family of 
Naples experienced the wrath of the potentate beyond all others. 
During the war, an Anglo-Russian fleet had landed at Naples, and 
been received by Ferdinand and Caroline with joy. Hereupon, 
Napoleon, the day after the conclusion of the peace of Presburg at 
Schonbrunu, subscribed the decree which contained the notorious 
decision, " The dynasty of the Bourbons has ceased to 
reign in Naples." Upon this, Joseph Buonaparte was 
named king of Naples, and installed in his new dignity by a French 
army. The royal family, who vainly strove to avert the loss of the 
beautiful land, at first by entreaf Les, and afterwards by stirring up the 
lazzaroni and Calabrese, fled with their friends and treasures to 
Sicily, where they lived under the protection of the English till 
Napoleon's down tall. A number of imperial fiefs, with considerable 
revenues, were established in the conquered and surrendered provinces 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. g87 

of Italy, and conferred upon French marshals and statesmen together 
with the title of duke. 

After the battle of Austerlitz, the Prussian ambassador, Haugwitz, 
did not venture to convey the charge of his court to the victorious 
emperor ; without asking permission in Berlin, he allowed himself to 
be induced, partly by threats, and partly by the engaging affability of 
Napoleon, to subscribe an unfavourable contract, by which Prussia 
exchanged the Franconian principality of Anspach, some lands on the 
Lower Rhine, and the principality of Neuremberg in Switzerland, for 
Hanover. It was in vain that the king resisted the exchange, which 
threatened to involve him in hostilities with England ; separated from 
Austria by the hasty conclusion of the peace of Presburg, nothing 
was left to the king but to submit to the dictation of the victor. 
The news of the sudden change in affairs produced by the battle of 
Austerlitz produced such an effect upon the English 
minister, Pitt, that he shortly after died. 

§ 510. The constitution of the German empire was already dis- 
solved by the elevation of the elector of Bavaria and of the duke of 
"Wirtemberg into independent monarchs. Napoleon, in consequence, 
entertained the project of entirely removing the south and west of 
Germany from the influence of Austria, and of uniting them to him- 
self by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine. A prospect 
of enlarging their territories and increasing their power, and fear of 
the mighty ruler from whose side victory appeared inseparable, 
induced a great number of princes and estates of the empire to 
separate themselves from the German empire and to join France. 
Self-interest was more powerful than patriotism. On the 12th July, 
the treaty was signed in Paris, by virtue of which Napoleon, as 
protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, recognized the full 
sovereignty of the individual members, upon condition of their main- 
taining a certain contingent of troops ready at the emperor's disposal. 
Bavaria, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hessen-Darmstadt, Nassau, and several 
others, formed the kernel around which the lesser principalities, as 
Plohenzollern, Leichtenstern, Solms, &c, collected themselves, till at 
length almost all the German confederate states of the second and 
third rank gave in their adhesion. The elector arch-chancellor 
Dalberg, who had been made prince-primate, and who had received 
Frankfort, together with Hanau and Fulda as a principality, was 
chosen Napoleon's representative in the Confederation of the Rhine. 
By the subjection of many small and formerly independent states of 
the empire under the government of the great prince, the power of 
the larger number of the members of the confederation was consider- 
ably increased. Francis II. now abdicated the title of emperor of 
Germany, and called himself Francis I., emperor of Austria, and 
withdrew the whole of his states from the German Union. By this 

c c 2 



8S8 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

proceeding the " Holy Boman empire of the German nation" was dis- 
solved. It had been long since reduced to a shadow by internal 
dissensions and a powerless supreme government. Its mightiest 
limbs were now the vassals of a foreign tyrant. The sense of degra- 
dation pressed heavily upon many a German breast ; but who would 
dare to utter his thoughts after the bold bookseller, Palm, of Nurem- 
berg, had become the victim of a disgraceful judicial murder for 
Au ust ^6 refusing to give up the author of a pamphlet published 
by him on the abasement of Germany ? 

3. JENA. TILSIT. EKFUKT. 

§ 511. The wavering conduct of Prussia had filled Napoleon with 
the deepest anger, and convinced him that the king would be untrust- 
worthy as a friend, and cowardly and innocuous as an enemy. He 
accordingly flung aside all respect and forbearance, and purposely 
inflicted many mortifications upon the Prussian government. The 
irritation produced by this was soon aggravated into a complete 
rupture by two causes. 1. The formation of the Confederation of the 
Rhine appeared to indicate an intention of gradually rendering 
Germany as dependent upon the Prench empire as were Italy and 
Holland. Prussia accordingly attempted to frustrate this plan by the 
establishment of a northern confederation, to which all the estates of 
the empire which had not yet joined that of the Ehine might connect 
themselves ; and felt herself deeply aggrieved when Napoleon prevented 
the execution of the project. 2. It was made known in Berlin that 
the Prench emperor, during the renewal of the negotiations for peace 
with the English government, had offered to restore the electorate of 
Hanover, that had been surrendered to Prussia without consulting 
with the Prussian government on the subject. This intelligence, to- 
gether with numerous violations of territory, convinced the Prussian 
government that they had the worst to expect from Prance. A 
redress of all grievances was demanded in the so-called Ultimatum, 
the army was placed upon a war-footing, and all connexion with 
Prance broken off. 

§ 512. Whilst people in Berlin were expecting the final answer of 
Prance, the Prench troops under Napoleon and his experienced 
marshals were already in the heart of Thuringia and Saxony, the 
elector of which had united himself, after some hesitation, to Prussia. 
The first engagement at Saalfeld, where the gallant prince 
Louis found his death, went against the Prussians ; but 
the defeat suffered by the army under the command of the old duke 
of Brunswick in the great double battle of Jena and 
October 14. Auergtadt was terrible and fatal. It decided the fate of 
the countries between the Rhine and the Elbe. The former presump- 
tion of the officers and young nobles was suddenly turned into 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 389 

despondency, and the greatest confusion and helplessness took 
possession of the leaders. Hohenlohe, with 17,000 men, laid down 
arms at Prenzlow ; the fortresses of Erfurt, Magdeburg, 
Spondau, Stettin, &c, surrendered within a few days, 
with such wonderful celerity, that the commandants of many of them 
were suspected of treachery, so utterly unaccountable did such 
cowardice and such entire want of self-reliance appear. Bliicher 
alone saved the honour of Prussia by the bloody combat in and 
around Eubeck, though he could not prevent the horrible storming 
of this slightly-fortified town ; in Colberg, also, Gneisenau and Schill, 
supported by the brave citizen, Nettlebeek, courageously resisted the 
superior force of the enemy. Thirteen days after the battle of Jena 
Xapoleon marched into Berlin, and issued his mandates from thence. 
The elector of Hessen, who wished to remain neutral, and who had 
withdrawn his forces from the contest, was obliged to surrender both 
land and army to the enemy, and to seek for protection as a fugitive 
in a foreign land. He took up his residence in Prague, The duke 
of Brunswick, who had been severely wounded, and who was carried 
into his capital on a litter after the battle of Jena, was compelled to 
seek for refuge in Denmark to die in peace. Jena and East Pries- 
land were united to Holland ; the Hanse towns, as well as Leipsic, 
were oppressed by the deprivation of all English wares, and by severe 
military taxes ; and treasures of art and science, and the trophies of 
former victories, were carried away from all quarters. It was only to 
the elector of Saxony, whose troops had fought at Jena, that Napo- 
leon showed any favour. He set the Saxon prisoners at liberty, and 
granted the elector a favourable peace : upon which the 
latter, dignified with the title of king, joined the Confede- 
ration of the Bhine, like the other Saxon dukes. From this time, 
Frederick Augustus, to the misfortune of himself and his people, felt 
himself bound by the ties of gratitude to the French emperor. 

§ 513. The king of Prussia had fled to Konigsberg, where he vainly 
attempted to obtain peace. Napoleon's demands rose with his for- 
tunes. In his necessity, Frederick "William turned to his friend 
Alexander, who immediately dispatched a Bussian army under Ben- 
ningsen and others into East Prussia, to prevent the French passing 
the Vistula. Upon this, Napoleon issued a proclamation to the 
Poles, pretendedly in the name of Kosciusko, by which these misused 
people were summoned to fight for liberty and independence. The 
Poles willingly made the greatest sacrifices and strengthened the 
ranks of the French by their brave soldier-; under the command of 
Dombrowski. Xapoleon marched into Warsaw amidst the rejoicings 
of the people ; but the Poles discovered, only too soon, that the foreign 
potentate was more intent upon the gratification of his own ambition 
and love of power, than upon the restoration of their empire. Alur- 



390 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

derous battles were now foaglit on the banks of the Vistula, and 
torrents of blood shed at Pultusk and Morungen. But the great 
February 8, blow was struck in the battle of Preuss-Eylau, where the 
1807. martial spirit of the French and Russians gave rise to a 

contest which in loss of men equals any event of the sort in the 
world's history. Both parties claimed the victory, and the efforts and 
exhaustion were so great, that the war suffered an interruption of 
four months. During this interval negotiations were again renewed ; 
but much as the king, who was waiting with his family in Memel, 
might desire the termination of the war, that he might free his sub- 
jects from the dreadful exactions of the French, he was too honest 
to dissever his own cause from that of his ally. But when the 
Silesian fortresses on the Oder, Glogau, Brieg, Schweidnitz, and 
Breslau fell into the hands of the French by the cowardice of their 
commandants, and even Dantzic was surrendered to the 
marshal Lefebvre by the gallant governor Kalkreutk, the 
kino- lost all confidence in a successful issue. When, after the re- 
commencement of hostilities, the French gained a brilliant victory 
over the Russians in the battle of Friedland, on the anniversary of 
the battle of Marengo, and took possession of Konigsberg, the allied 
monarchs, after a personal interview with Buonaparte on the Niemen, 
thought it prudent to consent to the peace of Tilsit, op- 
June 7—9. p ress i ve as were the conditions. By this peace, Frederick 
William lost half his states ; he was compelled to surrender all the 
lands between the Rhine and the Elbe, to consent to the establish- 
ment of a dukedom of "Warsaw under the supremacy of the king of 
Saxony, to the elevation of Dantzic into a-free state, and to the pay- 
ment of the unheard sum of 150 millions to defray the expenses of 
the war. Napoleon formed the states ceded by Prussia, along with 
electoral Hessen, Brunswick, and South Hanover, into the new king- 
dom of AVestphalia, with the capital Kassel, and placed there bis 
youngest brother Hieronymus as king, under condition, that, as a 
member of the Bhine Confederation, he should supply the emperor 
with Westphalian troops, and make over to him one-half the receipts 
of his treasury. 

§ 514. Austerlitz and Jena had broken the power of Austria and 
Prussia, so that the destinies of Europe were now guided by France, 
England, and Russia. These three great powers were iinanimous in 
this, that they paid no regard to right except where there existed the 
power of self-defence, as was shown by the proceedings in Sweden 
and Denmark. Grustavus IV. of Sweden would not accede to the 
peace of Tilsit ; but, supported by England, continued the war alone 
ao-ainst Napoleon. Although his conduct at first displayed strength 
of character and magnanimity, his boundless conceit, and his total 
misapprehension of his position and powers, soon showed that his 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 391 

mind must be in a deranged state. Strongly impressed with the 
sanctity of the kingly dignity, he refused the title of emperor to the ruler 
of France, and only addressed him as General Buonaparte ; involved 
in the meshes of religious fanaticism, he believed himself ordained by 
Providence to re-instate the Bourbons, and to overthrow the " beast 
of the Bevelations" (Napoleon). He carried his hatred against 
Buonaparte so far as mortally to offend Russia and Prussia by sending 
back their orders, and banishing their ambassadors from. Stockholm, 
because these powers had concluded a peace with the usurper. The 
Prench conquered Stralsund and the island of Bugen, whilst the 
Russian army penetrated into Pmnland and made themselves masters 
of the country. The attempts of the Prench emperor to destroy the 
trade of Great Britain by a continental blockade made the Swedish 
war a matter of importance to the English. They feared lest the 
Prench shoidd establish a firm footing on the Baltic, and exclude their 
ships from its shores by shutting up the Sound. They accordingly 
made a proposal to Denmark to enter into an alliance with them, and 
to yield up her noble fleet to then keeping. This proposal was 
rejected with indignation ; whereupon the English fleet appeared in 
September 2 the Sound, bombarded Copenhagen, laid a part of the 
—5, 1807. town in ashes, and carried off the whole Danish fleet as 
their prey. This breach of the rights of nations enraged the king of 
Denmark to such a degree, that he united himself closely to Prance, 
and declared war against the English and their ally, the king of 
Sweden. At this time Napoleon and Alexander were allies. They 
September 27, held the celebrated meeting in Erfurt, where the whole 

1808. splendour of European magnificence was displayed, and 
where four kings and thirty-four princes were assembled together out 
of Germany for the purpose of paying their homage to the mighty 
potentate. Here the two emperors promised not to interrupt each 
other in their plans of conquest, so that Napoleon was to be left 
unfettered in Spain (§ 515), and Alexander in Pinnland, Moldavia, 
and Wallachia. The kingdom of Sweden was now threatened on all 
sides. The Russians were already approaching the capital, the Danes, 
and the Spanish troops, who, under the command of La Romana, were 
serving Napoleon, were upon the frontiers ; the army and military 
affairs of Sweden were in the most wretched condition ; the heavy 
taxes could not be raised from the exhausted land ; and yet the king 
obstinately refused all proposals of peace. At this crisis, a con- 
spiracy was formed in the army and capital, in consequence of which 
Gustavus IV. was violently seized upon in his palace, compelled to 
abdicate his throne, and then conducted to an old insular castle. 
March 13 Hereupon the Diet declared Gustavus IV. and all his 

1809. posterity to have forfeited the crown, invited his uncle, 
Charles XIIL, to the throne, and restricted the monarchical power. 






392 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

This revolution was followed by a peace by which Pinnland and the 
Aaland islands remained with Russia. The election of a successor to 
the throne, which was rendered necessary by the childless old age of 
the king, fell upon the marshal Bernadotte (Ponte-Corvo), who, by 
his friendly treatment of the Swedish troops during the Prussian war, 
had gained many friends among the officers. Bernadotte was, with 
August 21, the unwillingly yielded consent of Napoleon, declared 
1810. successor to the Swedish throne, and, after his accession 

to the Lutheran church, adopted by Charles XIII. 

4. THE EVENTS IN THE PYKENEAN PENINSULA. 

§ 515. Led astray by the success of his arms, Napoleon now pro- 
ceeded from one enterprise to another. Like Charlemagne, whom he 
adopted as his model, he wished to unite the Southern and Western 
states of Europe into a vast empire under the supremacy of Prance. 
"With this object he sought to gain possession of the Spanish penin- 
sula, and to make himself master of the provinces still left unconquered 
in Italy. In the first place he demanded of the Portuguese government 
to renounce the alliance with England, and to close their harbours 
against EngUsh vessels. "When the court of Lisbon refused to yield 
submission to this mandate, Napoleon brought over the all-powerful 
favourite of the royal pair of Spain, the "prince of peace," G-odoy, by 
the prospect of a principabty in Portugal, and sent marshal Junot 
with an army directly through Spain into that country. The dastardly 
court of Lisbon did not await the coming of the Prench, but fled, 
November, with all its treasures, in English ships, to the Brazils ; 
18(>7. upon which Junot, who had been created duke of Abrantes, 

took possession of the capital and the whole country, and then de- 
clared, in the name of his commander, " that the house of Braganza 
had ceased to reign." Godoy, who, without either virtue, talent, or 
February 1, merit, had become the absolute ruler of Spain by the 
1808. mere favour of the profligate queen and the boundless 

weakness of Charles IV., now delivered up his country into the hands 
of Napoleon. Spanish troops under La Romana entered into the 
sendee of the emperor, and fought on the Danish islands agaiust the 
Swedes, whilst the soldiers of Prance were occupying Spain in great 
numbers. Tins caused commotions amongst the Spanish people: 
disturbances broke out in Aranjuez and Madrid, in which the palace 
of the detested favourite was plundered and destroyed, and he himself 
roughly handled and threatened with death. Terrified by these 
occurrences, the weak Charles abdicated his throne in 
favour of his eldest son Ferdinand, who, as the enemy of 
Godoy, was loved by the people, but, for the same reason, mortally 
hated by his parents. But notwithstanding the humflity with which 
Ferdinand attempted to gain Napoleon's consent to this change of 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 393 

the crown, and at the same time became a suitor for the hand of one 
of his relatives — the French emperor concealed his sentiments, ordered 
M urat to take possession of Madrid, and then invited the royal pair, 
along with the " prince of peace " and Ferdinand, to a personal confer- 
ence with him in Bayonne. Ferdinand did not dare to resist the 
summons of the potentate, although warned by his friends, and though 
the people sought to restrain him from undertaking this fatal journey. 
Once in Bayonne, the royal family of Spain was entangled by Na- 
poleon in the meshes of a false and insidious state policy. Charles 
was prevailed upon to revoke his abdication, and to transfer the re- 
gained crown to Napoleon and his family. Ferdinand, incapable of a 
vigorous resolution, allowed himself to be induced by the emperor's 
threats and intrigues to acknowledge this arbitrary act. He resided 
henceforth in France, in the enjoyment of an annuity, whilst Charles 
IV. and his family settled in Borne. Napoleon then named his 
brother Joseph king of Spain, and sought to win over the 
people to the new system by the restoration of the Cortes 
Constitution, and by improving the affairs of government, and of the 
administration of justice. But the frightful insurrection in Madrid 
by which 1200 French .soldiers of Murat's army were 
killed whilst the intrigues in Bayonne were yet pending, 
showed that the nation would not submit so easily to the foreign 
yoke as the imbecile royal family. 

§ 516. Even before Joseph, after the surrender of the kingdom of 
Naples to his brother-in-law, Murat, held his solemn entry into Ma- 
drid, juntas were formed in several towns, which, as provisional 
governments, took the regulation of affairs into their own hands, and 
refused obedience to the new king. Armed bands under daring 
leaders, served them for defence ; and, favoured by the ravines and 
mountain heights of their country, began a guerilla war against the 
French soldiers. "Whilst the educated and enlightened were more 
attached to the new system, which afforded a life of political freedom, 
than to the kingly absolutism and priestly rule of the former period, 
and were consequently nicknamed u Josephines." the great mass of 
the people blindly followed the exhortations of fanatical monks and 
priests, who held the sacrilegious French in horror. It is true that 
Napoleon's army possessed sufficient power to maintain the king and 
his minister in Madrid, but their laws were respected no further than 
they could be supported by French bayonets. The more remote 
towns and provinces followed partly the juntas, which had their cen- 
tral point in the grand junta of Seville, and partly their own will, 
without recognizing any government whatever. But anarchy was 
the very thing that saved Spain in this stormy period. Europe gazed 
in astonishment upon a people, who courageously faced death for 
their nationality and independence, for their ancient manners and 



394 TIIE LATEST PERIOD. 

religious usages, for their superstitions and customary arrangements. 
The leaders of the bands, with their brave but undisciplined followers, 
avoided open battles ; their strength consisted in unexpected attacks 
and petty warfare. And whilst the French dissipated their strength 
in these siugle encounters, and in the siege of well-defended towns, 
the English, supported by the natives, began the first successful war 
by land against Napoleon. At first the French arms were successful. 
Bessieres drove back the unpractised troops of Spain at 
u y ' ' Eio Secco, and it seemed as if the assumption of arms by 
the Spanish people was only to increase the triumph of the military 
emperor, — when suddenly the report spread abroad of Dupont's 
capitulation at Baylen, in Andalusia, by which 20,000 
Frenchmen were made prisoners of war, and perished 
miserably. This blow filled the nation with enthusiasm and mflitary 
ardour. Joseph left Madrid, the French army retreated beyond the 
Ebro, and when intelligence was shortly after brought that in Portu- 
gal also the French were obliged to retreat before the English, under 
"Wellington, Moore, and others, and that they would have experienced 
a fate similar to that of Dupont's army, if the English, by the over- 
Auo-ust 30 hasty capitulation of Cintra, had not allowed Junot's 
1808. troops a free passage to France. The affairs of the 

French in the Pyrenean peninsula seemed ruined. 

§ 517. Napoleon himself now marched at the head of a mighty 
army into Spain. The unpractised troops of the insurgents, who 
opposed themselves without any regular plan to the great winner of 
battles, were defeated in several engagements, so that the emperor in 
December 4, f° ur weeks was able to enter Madrid and to give back 

1808. the crown to his brother Joseph. "Whilst Napoleon was 
making fresh arrangements in the capital, attempting by kindness 
and threats to induce the Spaniards to acknowledge Joseph, and in- 
flicting severe punishments upon some of the most refractory, his 
marshals were sustaining bloody encounters with the guerilla chiefs 
February 20, an( i the English. Saragossa was taken after the most 

1809. desperate resistance, and the gallant defender of the city, 
July 28. Palafox, conveyed to France ; the brave general Moore 
was kdled whilst embarking his troops at Corunna; and although 

Wellington obtained the advantage in the battle of Tala- 
vera, yet the English army restricted itself for some time 
to the defence of Portugal. Seville, also, and the whole of Andalusia 
and Granada, fell into the hands of the French. Spain, nevertheless, 
held herself erect. The national government removed to Cadiz, which 
bade defiance to every storm ; and the Spanish general, La Eomana, 
who, upon the news of his country's rise, had escaped with his troops 
from Denmark in English ships to his native soil, brought system and 
order to the guerilla warfare. 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 395 

"When in the year 1809 the new war with Austria called the em- 
peror from Spain, he left behind him a large army, consisting for the 
most part of Germans. At the conclusion of the Austrian war this 
force was increased to nearly 300,000 men, who, under the command 
of his most experienced marshals (Soult, Massena, Suchet, Ney, St. 
Cyr, Marmont, Macdonald, &c), traversed the peninsula in every 
direction, and raised the renown of the French arms. But victories 
only increased the hatred towards the French ; the petty war, under 
the daring leaders, Ballasteros, Empecinado, MoriUo, O'Donnel, Mina, 
Moreto, assumed a more sanguinary character, and no courage was of 
avail against the assassination to which the revengeful Spaniards were 
driven by rage and fanaticism. The most heroic deeds that were per- 
formed by Napoleon's warriors, under the fervid sun of Spain, now in 
the battle-field, and now in toilsome marches, through mountains and 
ravines, and again in sieges and storms (Valencia, Gerona), contri- 
buted nothing to the quiet possession of the country. In the mean 
while the Cortes Assembly in Cadiz projected the liberal constitution 
which is known as the Constitution of the year '12, and which was to 
have destroyed absolute monarchy and the power of the priests in 
Spain for ever. But this constitution, owing to the hatred of the 
priests, remained unknown and detested by the people. 

§ 518. The Russian campaign of 1812 compelled the emperor to 
diminish the Spanish army. Wellington took advantage of this to 
march into Spain with a larger force. Supported by the guerilla 
bands, the British army soon obtained advantages over their oppo- 
July 22, nents, who were suffering from every kind of want. After 

1812. Marmont' s defeat at Salamanca by Wellington, the Eng- 
lish took possession of Madrid and drove out the French king. 
Suchet, duke of Albufera, and Soult, both alike brave and rapacious, 
held fortune firm to their standards, and Joseph was once more able 
to take possession of his tottering throne ; .but the frightful cata- 
strophe produced by the Russian campaign, compelled the French 
army in the western peninsula also to retreat, and obliged Joseph to 
June 21 q 11 ^ the Spanish territory. After the victory of Vittoria, 

1813. Wellington foUowed the retreating forces over the Pyre- 
nees, but found a brave opponent in Soult, even on French ground. 
So late as the 10th of April, 1814, when the allies were encamped on 
the Elysian fields of Paris, the marshal still resisted the advancing 
enemy at Toulouse, although compelled to yield the field to the 
superior enemy. 

§ 519. Imprisonment or the Pope. — The hatred against the 
French, and the fanatical fury of the Spaniards, were the work of the 
priests : Napoleon might have learned from this what power the 
religion he denied, and its venerable usages, were capable of exerting 
upon the minds of believers ; but in his pride he refused to recognize 



396 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

any bonds that could limit his ambition. When the pope refused to 
lay an embargo upon the English ships in the ports of the States of 
the Church, and to enter into an offensive and defensive alliance with 
France, Napoleon inflicted upon him a succession of injuries, and 
united some portions of the ecclesiastical States to the kingdom of 
Italy. This, however, in no ways subdued the resolution of the in- 
flexible prince of the Church ; on the contrary, he was thereby induced, 
in the second war with Austria, to make common cause with the 
opponents of the emperor, against the supremacy of France. Here- 
May 27, upon, Napoleon, in a decree published at Schonbrunn, 
1809. declared that the temporal power of the pope had ceased ; 
and when the holy father, irritated at this, fulminated an excommuni- 
June 16 cation against the emperor, Napoleon ordered him to be 
carried off from Borae by violence, banished the cardinals, 
and united the States of the Church with the French 
territory. Pius VII. lived in several towns, till at length a residence 
was allotted him in Fontainbleau. As he obstinately refused, whilst 
in a state of captivity and deprived of his council of cardinals, to fill 
lip the vacant bishoprics, or to arrange any ecclesiastical affairs, 
Napoleon found himself again compelled to arbitrary and despotic 
measures. The pope, however, at length allowed himself, hi an 
unguarded moment, to be persuaded to an arrangement by which his 
authority was diminished. 

5. THE SECOND AUSTRIAN WAR. HOEER. SCHILL. (1S09.) 

§ 520. Napoleon's arbitrary proceedings in Italy, and his increas- 
ing influence in Grermany, awakened the anxiety of Austria. The 
cabinet of Vienna, therefore, resolved once more to try the fortune of 
war. The popular war in Spain, in which the French emperor was 
obliged to employ a considerable portion of his forces, the universal 
discontent at the restrictions upon commerce, the deep movement in 
Northern Grermany, all this seemed to point out that the favourable 
moment was arrived for Austria to regain the power she had lost, 
and to break to pieces the foreign despotism. The landsturm was 
called out, and an attempt was made, by means of vehement proclama- 
tions, full of fine promises, to awaken enthusiasm and patriotic feel- 
ing. But the magic of the imperial name was still too powerful. 
The princes of the Rhine Confederation strengthened the French 
army with their brave troops, and the soldiers of South Germany 
poured forth their blood for a foreign despot against the warriors of 
.their own race. 

In April, Austria ordered its army, which was placed 

under the command of the archduke Charles, to march 

into Bavaria and Italy. But the first encounters decided the fate of 

the war. Napoleon, supported by Wirtemberg and Bavaria, marched 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 397 

down the Danube with a considerable force, drove the enemy over 
the Inn by a succession of victorious encounters (Abensberg, Eck- 
April 20—22, miihi), and marched for the second time into the heart 
1809. of the Austrian dominions. On the 10th of May the 

emperor stood before the walls of the capital, which three days after 
he entered as a conqueror. Below Vienna, the north bank of the 
Danube, which is there crossed by numerous bridges, was defended 
by the archduke Charles. Upon the French army attempting to 
cross the river from Lobau, an island in the stream, they met with 
such opposition in the two days' combat of Aspern and 
Eshngen, that they were obliged to relinquish the attempt. 
This bloody, though indecisive battle, where 12,000 French soldiers, 
including marshal Lannes, were left upon the field, gave the first 
shock to the belief in Napoleon's invincibility, and increased the con- 
fidence of the oppressed people. It was only when the emperor had 
received re-enforcements, and Eugene Beauharnais had united himself 
to the grand army, after the victory at Raab, that the French again, 
and this time with more success, attempted the passage of the river, 
and defeated the archduke in the great battle of Wagram. 
The loss on both sides was tolerably equal, and it was not 
to be disputed that the French no longer retained their former 
superiority in the field. Austria, a few days later, concluded, over 
hastily, the truce of Znaym, that she might open nego- 
tiations for a fresh peace. 
§ 521. This truce was fatal to the Tyrolese. The warlike inhabit- 
ants of the mountainous region of the Tyrol, who were attached with 
the truest devotion to Austria, had risen at the commencement of the 
Avar to free themselves from the detested government of Bavaria, 
under which they had been placed by the peace of Presburg. The 
stimulating exhortations of their priests, who possessed great in- 
fluence over these simple mountaineers, and the enticements and 
promises of Austria produced a general insurrection. Trusting to 
the assistance of Austria, the Tyrolese seized the familiar rifle, and, 
like the Spaniards, directed from the mountain heights and gullies 
the unerring tube against the French and Bavarians, to hazard life 
and property in defence of the customs of their fathers. At then' 
head stood Andreas Hofer, a publican in the Passeyrthal, a man of 
great consideration among his countrymen both on account of his 
bodily strength and courage, as well as his piety, his patriotism, and 
his honourable character. Shrewder and more far-sighted men, as 
Hormayr, the historian of the Tyrol and of this war, made use of 
Hofer 's influence with the people to carry the movement through 
the whole land. By the side of Hofer stood Speckbacher, the soul of 
the confederation. A frightful war broke out ; the Bavarians were 
compelled to evacuate the German Tyrol, and Hofer took possession 



39S THE LATEST PERIOD. 

of Innsbruck as the Austrian commandant. The truce of Znayin 
produced discouragement and irresolution among the insurgents, 
without, however, putting an end to the war. But when the con- 
clusion of the peace of Vienna or Schonbrunn, by Avhich Austria again 
lost 2000 square (German) miles and three millions of subjects, 
deprived the Tyrolese of all hopes of assistance, and the Bavarians 
and French, with increased forces, marched into the land from three 
different quarters, the insurrection was quelled. Innsbruck again fell 
into the hands of the Bavarians. Speckbacher and other leaders 
sought their safety in flight ; but Hofer, who, led astray by bad 
counsel, had again taken up arms, was discovered in a cave where he 
February 18, naa concealed himself for two months with his family, 
1810. and shot in Mantua. He died with the courage of a 

hero, and highly reverenced by his countrymen. Tyrol was divided 
into three portions. 

§ 522. During the second Austrian war attempts were made in 
various parts of Germany to shake off the foreign yoke. In Kur- 
hessen the colonel von Dorenberg attempted to overthrow the king 
of Westphalia by an insurrection. The failure of this attempt did 
not deter the brave major von Schill from hazarding a similar one in 
Prussia. With a troop of bold volunteers he hoped to arouse the 
North of Germany against the foreign despotism. But fear of the 
great emperor of battles paralyzed the arms of the people. Pursued 
by the enemy, Schill threw himself into the strong town of Stralsund, 
May 31, ^ the bope of being able to take ship from thence to 
1809. England. But he fell during an assault, together with 

most of his companions in arms, beneath the sabres of the enemy's 
cavalry ; the rest were made prisoners of war, the officers shot in 
Wesel and Brunswick, and the privates condemned to the French 
galleys. 

Duke William of Brunswick, the heroic son of the field marshal, 
was more fortunate. He had marched to the aid of Austria with his 
"black band;" but treated the truce of Znaym with contempt, be- 
cause in it he had only been regarded as an Austrian marshal, and 
not as an independent prince of the empire, fought his way with 
incredible bravery through hostile lands and armies to the North Sea, 
from whence he escaped Avith his followers to England. The intense 
October 12, excitement of men's minds was evinced by the attempted 
1809. assassination of Napoleon by a young man of Hamburgh 

named Staps. Being seized by general Rapp, and confessing his 
intention, he was led to death. 

If the enterprises of Schill and Dorenberg were foolhardy and incon- 
siderate, they were nevertheless of importance as proofs of the senti- 
ments prevailing among the people, and of the newly-aroused patriotism. 
These sentiments were encouraged and fostered chiefly in Prussia. 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 399 

It was here that patriotically disposed men had assumed the conduct 
of affairs after the disastrous days of Jena and Tilsit, and driven the 
characterless old Prussian party from the councils of the king. The 
high-minded baron von Stein attempted to elevate the citizen and 
peasant class by introducing a liberal municipal government, render- 
ing the possession of landed property attainable by every one, and 
limiting the class privileges of the middle ages. Scharnhorst com- 
pletely revolutionized the affairs of the army : the employment of 
mercenary troops was superseded by the universal obligation to bear 
arms, the feelings of honour were excited among the privates by 
throwing open the rank of officer to all, and by the abolition of 
degrading punishments. It is true that the king in a short time 
found himself compelled to remove his patriotic advisers, when the 
mandate of Napoleon outlawed the baron von Stein, and compelled 
him to take refuge in Russia. But their works, nevertheless, re- 
mained, and formed the groundwork of a system of government which 
was founded upon the legal equality of the whole of the citizens. 
Stein's successor, the astute chancellor von Hardenberg, proceeded, 
as much as possible, upon the same principles ; and the Tugenbund, 
which was joined by some of the noblest men of the country, aroused 
and encouraged patriotism and love of freedom among the people and 
the ardent youth. 

§ 523. The Bbench Empibe at its height. — Napoleon stood at 
the summit of his power and greatness after the peace of Yienna. It 
was only the reflection that he had no heir that occasioned him any 
disquiet ; he accordingly got himself divorced from Josephine upon 
December 15, the ground of some informality in their nuptials, and 
1809. married Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Austria. 

It was on the 1st of April, 1810, that he celebrated his nuptials with 
the "daughter of the Caesars." Five queens supported the train of 
the bride, and an unexampled magnificence was displayed. But a fire 
during the ball that was given by the Austrian ambassador, Schwarzen- 
berg, in honour of the newly-married pair, and in which his sister 
perished in the flames, was regarded as an omen of evil promise. 
March 20, When a son was born to the emperor in the following 
I 811 - year, who received the pompous title of king of Borne, 

Napoleon's fortune seemed to be complete and the future of France 
secured. But pride and ambition drove him on from one act of 
violence to another ; there was no end of the alliances, separations, 
and interchanges of lands and territories : what the despot created 
to-day he destroyed on the morrow ; he who he made a great man 
one year he humbled in the following. The blockade of the continent 
became daily more rigid, to the despair of merchants and traders. 
"When king Louis of Holland resisted this, and permitted his people 
some relaxation, he was so unkindly and unworthily treated by his 



400 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

imperial brother that he renounced the throne, upon which Napoleon 
united the kingdom of Holland with France. A few months later he 
also added the Hanse towns, Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, and, be- 
sides these, the dukedom of Oldenburg and the provinces between 
the Rhine and the Elbe, to the French empire, which now ruled the 
whole coast of the North Sea, and numbered 130 departments. 
Hamburg was made the capital of the new territory, and the cruel 
Davoust placed there as ruler. The slavery within increased with 
the extension without. A formidable state-police suppressed the last 
remains of freedom, and threatened every suspected person with per- 
secution and imprisonment. Arbitrariness, passion, and despotism, 
usurped the place of popular rights ; restrictions on trade, oppressive 
taxation, and military conscriptions were the burdens imposed upon 
friendly states ; the calamities of war, exactions, and the quarterings 
of troops, the miseries of the hostile. 

6. TIIE WAK AGAINST RUSSIA. 

§ 524. The extension of the empire of France even to the shores 
of the Baltic, by which means the duke of Oldenburg, a near relation 
of the imperial family of Russia, was deprived of his lands, completely 
destroyed the friendship between Alexander and Napoleon, which 
had already grown cold since the increase of the dukedom of Warsaw 
by the peace of Vienna. This hostile feeling, which was first dis- 
played in the angry language of diplomatists and in newspaper 
articles, was increased when the Russian government proclaimed a 
new tarif unfavourable to the importation of French goods. Botli 
parties prepared themselves for a desperate struggle. The emperor 
of Russia concluded a peace with the Turks by the mediation of the 
English, and brought over to his side Bernadotte of Sweden, whom 
Napoleon had greatly injured; the French emperor, on the other 
hand, arranged a treaty with Prussia and Austria, by which he 
obtained a considerable increase of his forces. Alexander's defiant 
demand, that the French garrisons should at once evacuate Pomerania 
and Russia, pi*oduced a declaration of war. 

§ 525. In May, Napoleon, accompanied by his wife, made his 
appearance in Dresden, where the princes of the Rhine Confederation, 
the emperor of Austria, and the king of Prussia, were likewise present 
to pay their homage to the potentate who was now summoning half 
Europe to arms against Russia. After a residence of ten days among 
this brilliant assemblage of princes, Napoleon hastened to his army, 
nearly half a million strong, and which, with more than a thousand 
cannon and 20,000 baggage waggons, was lying scattered along 
between the Vistula and the Nicmen. The left wing, consisting for 
the most part of Poles and Prussians, under the command of Mac- 
donald, was placed upon the banks of the Baltic ; the right, formed 



NAPOLEON EMPEROR. 401 

by the Austrian auxiliaries led by Schwarzenberg, with a division 
of French aud Saxons under Regnier, stood on the Lower Bug 
opposite the southern army of the Russians ; the body, commanded 
by Napoleon himself, and under him by the most experienced mar- 
shals of his school, crossed the Niemen in June and marched into 
Wilna. The appearance of the French awakened the most sanguine 
expectations and warlike enthusiasm among the Poles. The diet of 
Warsaw declared the restoration of the kingdom of Poland, and 
determined upon the formation of a general confederation. But 
popidar movements were not to Napoleon's taste ; he forbade a rise 
en masse, and damped the enthusiasm by declaring that out of regard 
to Austria he could not consent to the restoration of the Polish 
republic in its whole extent. Nevertheless, Polish warriors under 
Poniatowski and others fought with their accustomed valour beneath 
the eagles of Napoleon, and the Polish people supported, to the best 
of their power, the foreign troops that were now marching in the 
midst of dreadful rains from Wilna to Witepsk. Moscow, " the 
heart of Russia," was Napoleon's aim; but he soon discovered what 
powerful allies the Russians were possessed of in the nature of then 
country. The roads were impassable, supplies did not arrive, the 
poor and badly cultivated soil afforded little means of subsistence ; 
diseases diminished the number of troops and filled the hospitals. 

§ 526. The Russian generals, Barclay de Tolly and Bagration, 
avoided a fixed battle, and lured the emperor onwards deeper into 
August 17, the country. The first battle was fought at Smolensk ; 
1812. but after fighting a whole day without any decisive result, 

the Russians, in the night, left the town, which was in flames. On 
the following morning the French found the site of the town drenched 
with blood and covered with corpses. A council of war was held in 
Smolensk, but, despite the number of voices that were raised against 
the continuance of the campaign, Napoleon insisted upon the con- 
quest of Moscow, where he intended to pass the winter, and to force 
Alexander to a peace. The Russians murmured at Barclay's mode 
of conducting the war, as the Romans had once done at the delay of 
Fabius, for which reason Alexander appointed general Kutusoff to 
the command, who, as a native of the country, was nearer to the 
people, and who was much beloved by the lower class of Russians for 
his attachment to the religious customs, and to the old Russian 
manners and usages. Kutusoff dared not allow the holy city of 
Moscow, with its innumerable towers and golden cupolas, to fall into 
the hands of the French, unless he wished to forfeit all the affections 
of the people. He halted his troops, and by this means brought 
about the murderous battle of Borodino, on the Moskwa, 
in which the French indeed remained in possession of the 
field, but were obliged to allow the Russians to retire in good order. 

Dd 



402 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Upwards of 70,000 bodies covered the field ; Ney, " the prince of the 
Moskwa," was the hero of the day. On the 14th of September the 
French entered Moscow. The nobility and Ihe better class of 
citizens had left the place. A secret horror fell npon the soldiers as 
they entered the town, and saw nothing but a few of the rabble 
creeping about; but who can describe their terror when the four 
days' conflagration of Moscow, which, in the absence of all means of 
extinguishing it, soon became a sea of flame, reduced the city, which 
was built of wood, and the ancient Kremlin, which Napoleon him- 
self had chosen for a residence, to ashes ? The governor of Moscow, 
Rostopschin, had given orders for this horrible deed, without the com- 
mand of the tzar, for the purpose of depriving the grand army of its 
winter quarters, and of compelling it to a disastrous retreat. Forgetful 
of all order and discipline, the soldiers rushed into the burning houses 
to gratify their passions and love of plunder. 

§ 527. From all this it was apparent that the Russians were waging 
a war of extermination, and yet Napoleon, from some unaccountable 
delusion, suffered himself to be decoyed, by the artfully sustained 
hopes of a peace, into remaining for thirty-four days in Moscow with- 
out caring to see that Kutiisoff was seeking to detain him till the 
commencement of whiter, that during the retreat the cold might 
destroy the half-clad soldiers, who were suffering from the want of the 
merest necessaries. At length, late in October, was commenced that 
fatal retreat of the grand army, which has no parallel in the history 
of the sufferings of war. The plan at first contemplated, of marching 
upon Kaluga, Avas given up after the dreadful battle of 
Malo-Jaroslowetz, and the road towards Smolensk over 
the corpse-covered battle-field of Borodino was entered upon. In 
November the cold reached 18, and afterwards became 27 degrees 
below zero. Who can describe all the sufferings, battles, and fatigues, 
by which the grand army was gradually destroyed in the midst of the 
stern winter ? Hunger, cold, and exhaustion, produced greater 
ravages than the bullets of the Russians or the lances of the Cossacks. 
It was a horrible sight to see thousands of starved or frozen soldiers 
lying in the public roads or on the desolate steppes covered with snow 
and ice, intermingled with fallen horses, abandoned arms, and rich 
articles of plunder. Kutusoff, who, in a proclamation, ascribed the 
burning of Moscow to the French, to inflame the hatred of the people 
still more against them, never left their flank, and forced them to 
contest every yard of ground. AVhen Smolensk was reached, about 
the middle of November, the army still numbered about 40,000 men, 
fit for service ; these were followed by upwards of 30,000 unarmed 
si ragglers, \\ ithout discipline, order, or leaders ; a picture of wretched- 
ness and horror. And yet it was here that the greatest misery 
began, inasmuch as by some error in the orders, the expected supplies 



GERMAN WAR OF LIBERATION. ' 403 

of arms, clothes, and necessaries, were not forthcoming in the town, 
and the enemy with increased forces were obstructing the path of 
march. The hero of the retreat was Ney, the commander of the rear, 
the "bravest of the brave." His passage over the frozen but partly 
thawed Dnieper during the night, was one of the most daring feats 
recorded in history. On the 25th of November the army arrived at 
the ever-memorable river Beresina. Two bridges were thrown across 
the stream in the presence of the hostile army, and the small remnant 
that still preserved its discipline passed over in the midst of innu- 
merable dangers, but nearly 18,000 stragglers that did not arrive in 
time fell into the hands of the enemy. How many Were drowned 
between the masses of ice in the cold waves of the river, or were 
trampled down and destroyed in the dreadful press, no one can 
November tell. After the passage of the Beresina, Napoleon had 
26—29. still 8000 soldiers fit for service. Ney was the last man 

of the rear-guard. According to the official account 243,600 enemies' 
bodies were buried in B-ussia. Half Europe had to mourn. On the 
3rd of December Napoleon published the celebrated 29th bulletin, 
which informed the expectant people who had been without intelli- 
gence for months, that the emperor was safe and the grand army 
destroyed. Two days afterwards he made over the command to Murat, 
and hastened to Paris to arrange fresh armaments. 



D. DISSOLUTION OF THE EEENCH EMPIEE, AND 
ESTABLISHMENT OE A EEESH SYSTEM. 

1. THE GEBMAN WAB, OE LIBEBATION, AND THE EALE OE 
NAPOLEON. 

§ 528. The saying attributed to Talleyrand, that the Russian cam- 
paign was "the beginning of the end," soon proved true. No doubt 
oppressive conscriptions soon filled up the chasms in the Erench 
army, but the faith in Napoleon's invincibihty was gone ; and fresh 
armies formed from young and inexperienced men were opposed to 
an enemy that was inspired to great actions both by the victory it 
had attained and by the newly-awakened feeling of patriotism. So 
early as the 30th of December the Prussian general, York, who com- 
manded under Macdonald, on the east coast, had entered into an 
understanding with the Eussian marshal, Diebitsch, and had desisted, 
together with his troops, from any farther hostilities. It is true that 
this proceeding was publicly censured in Berlin, but the king's jour, 
ney to Breslau, where many patriotic men assembled themselves 
around him, was the first step towards the alliance with Eussia, 
which was completed in the following February. The boundless ill- 
February 3, usage experienced by Prussia had excited such a detesta- 
1813. tion against the foreign despotism, that the king's " Call 

d d2 



40 I THE LATEST PERIOD. 

to his people" to take up arms awakened au incredible ardour for war. 
The enthusiasm seized upon all ages and conditions. Touths and 
men withdrew themselves from their wonted occupations, and from 
the circles of affection, that they might dedicate their strength to the 
liberation of their fatherland. Students and teachers left the lecture- 
room, officials left then posts, young nobles the homes of their fathers ; 
they seized the musket and knapsack, and placed themselves in the 
ranks as common soldiers along with the mechanic who had come 
forth from his workshop, and the peasant who had exchanged the 
ploughshare for the sword. 

§ 529. The allied monarchs attempted to win over the king of 
Saxony to their cause. But Frederick Augustus resisted the invita- 
tion. Gratitude for the many proofs of favour and confidence which 
had been shown him by Napoleon, and fear of the anger of the poten- 
tate, bound him fast to his alliance with the French emperor. He 
placed his lands, his fortresses, and his troops at his disposal, and 
Saxony accordingly became the seat of the war. In the first battles 
,, „ at Liitzen and at Bautzen the French indeed retained 

May 2. 

M 20 possession of the field, and drove back their opponents as 

far as the Oder ; but the heroism of the young German 

warriors, who fearlessly presented their breasts to the storm of balls, 

showed the enemy that a different spirit had taken possession of the 

Prussians from that displayed at Jena. Scharnhorst breathed forth 

his heroic soul at Liitzen. Among the thousands who strewed the 

field in these two engagements were Bessieres and Duroc. The 

death of the latter, whom Napoleon loved and esteemed above all 

others for his, amiability, fidelity, and attachment, was a great shock 

to the French emperor. For the first time, a dark presentiment of 

the mutabilities of life seemed to take possession of his breast. But 

pride and presumption hurried him onwards. It was in vain that 

Austria endeavoui'ed, during a short cessation of hostilities, to negotiate 

a peace at the Congress of Prague ; Napoleon insolently 

refused to surrender any of the conquered countries. 

This was followed bv a breaking up of the truce, and bv 
August 12. . . . . 

Austria's declaration of war against France. It is true 

August 26, 27- that Napoleon, in the battle of Dresden, once more 

chained victory to his eagles, and had the pleasure of 

seeing his opponent, Moreau, whom Alexander had summoned from 

America, carried from the field mortally wounded ; but the fruits of 

the Dresden victory were destroyed (1) by Bliicher's simultaneous 

engagement on the Katzbach in Silesia, against Mac- 

donald, a battle in which Marshal "Forwards" gained 

the title of a prince of the battle-field. (2) By the French general, 

Vandamme, being surrounded and made prisoner with his whole 

army, in the hotly-contested battle of Culm, a catastrophe that was 



GERMAN WAR OF LIBERATION. 405 

brought about by Kleist's daring march across the 

' heights of Nollendorf, and by the pertinacious courage 

of the Russian guards under Ostermann ; and (3) by the splendid 

August 23. feats of the Prusso-Swedish army at Grros-Beeren and 

September 6. JJennewitz. 

§ 530. By the autumn the result of this great struggle was 
scarcely doubtful ; the princes of the Confederation of the Bhine 
gradually fell off from Napoleon, and joined the allies ; thus Bavaria, 
who concluded the treaty of Bied with Austria. In 
October the armies united themselves together in the broad 
plain of Leipsic ; the Austrians, under prince Schwarzenberg, in 
whose hands the management of the whole was placed ; the Bussians, 
under Barclay, Benningsen, and others ; the Prussians, under Blu- 
cher ; and the Swedes, under Bernadotte. The forces of the allies 
(300,000 men) were superior to the army conducted by Napoleon 
himself by 100,000 men. It was in vain that the Prench emperor, 
to whom the god of battles had so often been propitious, unfolded his 
mighty talents ; it was in vain that the most distinguished marshals 
of his school, Ney, Murat, Augereau, Macdonald, the Pole Ponia- 
towski, and many others, exerted their strength to the utmost. The 

October 16 three days' battle fought in Leipsic and the neighbouring 

18. villages was the grave of the Prench empire. After 

suffering an enormous loss,* Napoleon, in the night of the 19th 
October, quitted the town, which was immediately taken possession 
of by the allies. The over-hasty destruction of the Elster bridge 
delivered up 18,000 soldiers fit for battle into the hands of the 
victors, to say nothing of the sick and the wounded. Poniatowski, 
who during the battle had been made marshal, found his death in the 
waters. The Prench, closely pursued by the enemy, advanced by 
hasty marches by Erfurt to the Bhine. Their passage was opposed 
at Hanaii by Wrede, with Bavarians and Austrians ; but by this he 
only gave the " dying Hon " an opportunity of displaying his military 
October 30, skill. The victory that was gained at Hanau over the 
31 • wounded Wrede opened to the Prench the passage to the 

Bhine by the way of Prankfurt. But the unfortunates all carried the 
germs of mortal disease in their breasts, and half of them died before 
the end of the year in over-crowded hospitals. The dissolution of the 
kingdom of Westphalia, the return of the elector of Hessen, and of 
the dukes of Brunswick and Oldenberg to their own dominions, the 
imprisonment of the king of Saxony, and the breaking up of the 
Confederation of the Bhine, now followed in quick succession. 
Dalberg renounced his archdukedom of Prankfurt ; "Wirtemberg, 
Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, concluded treaties with Austria, and arrayed 
their troops beneath the standard of the allies. It was only in Ham- 
burg that the Prench maintained themselves, under the cruel 



406 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Davoust, till the May of 1814, and practised dreadful exactions and 
oppressions. The king of Denmark was punished for his adherence 
to Napoleon by the loss of Norway, which was given to Sweden by 
j amiary i4 j the peace of Kiel. The same thing happened in Italy. 
1814. The viceroy, Eugene, left the beautiful lands of the Po to 

the Austrians, after a gallant defence, and joined his father-in-law in 
Bavaria. The archduke Ferdinand returned to Tuscany, and the 
States of the Church received the severely-tried pope Pius VII. 
Naples alone remained for a short time in the hands of the cavalry 
leader, Murat, who, having quarrelled with his brother-in-law, joined 
himself to Austria. 

§ 531. The allied monarchs held a council with their ministers and 
generals in Frankfurt, established a provisional government over the 
conqxiered lands, and again made the French emperor an offer of 
peace, if he would content himself with the Rhine as the boundary of 
France. As, however, the vast preparations that Napoleon was 
making, by means of a severe conscription, convinced the allied 
powers that their adversary was going once more to try the chances 
January 1, °f battle, it was determined to cross the Rhine. It was 
1814. on New-year's night that Blucher crossed over the Ger- 

man river at several points between Mannheim and Coblentz with 
the Silesian army, whilst Schwarzenberg marched with the main body 
through Switzerland to the south-east of France, and a second Prus- 
sian army under Bulow freed Holland, and enabled the Stadtholder 
to return to his states. In Champagne the armies of Blucher and 
Schwarzenberg met together, and won the battle of 
Brienne (la Rothiere) . But, as the difficulty of obtaining 
provisions compelled the two armies again to separate, whilst Schwar- 
zenburg marched along the Seine, and Blucher followed the course of 
the Marne, the French emperor, whose military talents again blazed 
forth in then fullest lustre, succeeded in repeatedly defeating the 
Silesian army (at Montmirail, Chateau-Thierry), and compelling it to 
retreat. After this, he suddenly threw himself upon the 
main army, and drove this also back upon Troyes by the 
victory of Montereau. These events made such an impression upon 
the allies, that it would not have been difficult for the emperor, in 
the fresh negotiations for peace that were opened at Chatillon, to 
have secured himself upon the throne of France, if he would only 
have given up the other conquered countries. But, as he increased 
his demands wath every favourable turn of fortune, only gave limited 
powers to his ambassador, Caulaincourt, and paralyzed the negotia- 
tions by ambiguous and undecisive declarations, the decision was 
delayed until Blucher, Napoleon's most implacable enemy, 
had gained fresh advantages over the debilitated French 
army at Craonne and Laon. The negotiations were now broken 



NAPOLEON'S DEATH, AND THE RESTORATION. 407 

off, and the dethronement of Buonaparte resolved. The 
' battle of Arcis on the Aube, convinced the French 
emperor that his weakened and exhausted army would avail no longer 
against the iron ranks of the enemy ; and this conviction made him 
irresolute. Whilst the allies were marching upon Paris, and his 
presence in the capital was imperatively called for, he wasted his time 
in daring but fruitless marches. The heroic exertions of a few thou- 
sand National Guards at Fere-Champenoise was the last display of 
popular energy. A few days later the hostile army stormed Mont- 
martre. Upon this, Joseph, to whom Napoleon had entrusted the 
defence of the capital, placed his authority in the hands of Mortier 
and Marmont, and retired with the empress and the regency to Blois. 
The two marshals were soon compelled to yield to superior force, and 

to surrender the city by treaty. Hereupon followed the 
March 31. ... . 

entrance of the allies into Paris, and the establishment of 

a provisional government under the presidentship of Talleyrand. 
This astute diplomatist, a master in every intrigue and artifice, now 
devoted himself to the interests of the royal family, and attempted, 
by the employment of the principle of legitimacy, to exclude Napo- 
leon, and to bring about the restoration of the Bourbons. 

2. napoleon's death, and the bestobation. 

§ 532. In the meanwhile, Napoleon, with his guard and his friends, 
the number of which diminished every day, was lingering in Fontain- 
bleau. He varied helplessly from one resolution to another, till, 
at length, the news of Marmont' s defection decided him upon 
abdicating the throne in favour of his son. But this 
conditional abdication was not received by the allied 
powers ; he could not continue the contest, for even his nearest 
friends, Berthier, Ney, Oudinot, and others, had deserted him, and 
turned towards the new sun. In this extremity Napoleon 
p ' signed the unconditional act of abdication as dictated by 

the allies. He received the island of Elba as his property, an income 
of 2,000,000 francs, and the permission to retain 400 of his faithful 
guard around his person. His wife, Maria Theresa, obtained the 
duchy of Parma. On the 20th of April Napoleon ordered the grena- 
diers of his guard to be drawn up in the castle-yard of Pontainbleau, 
and, with a broken heart, took an affecting leave of them, amidst the 
sobs of the veteran heroes. On the 4th of May he landed at Elba. 
Shortly after, to the great joy of the people, who were weary of war, 
the First Peace of Paris was concluded, by which France 
received Louis XVIII. as king, a new constitutional 
government, and the boundaries of 1792. The foreign armies left 
the French territories, and the Congress of Vienna was to have placed 
the new order of things in Europe upon a firm foundation. 



408 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

§ 533. It was a splendid assembly this Vienna Congress. Empe- 
rors and kings, princes and nobles, of tbe most celebrated men of 
all countries were there assembled, and rejoicing over their victory. 
The majesty and civilization of all Europe there displayed themselves 
in their fullest lustre ; and the magnificent festivals, the riotous 
feasts, splendid balls, and evening assemblies, had no end. But the 
establishment of the new system was no light task ; and, in the midst 
of all this splendour and rejoicing violent passions were in motion, 
which threatened to destroy the work of peace before its completion. 
The return of the legitimate royal families to their lost thrones, and 
the most complete putting aside possible of the republican constitu- 
tions, were the two principles on which all parties were soon agreed ; 
but when questions respecting the division of the conquered and 
vacated lands, and the indemnification of the allies, came to be dis- 
cussed, envy, selfishness, avarice, and all impure motives were aroused. 
The court of Berlin demanded the union of Saxony with the Prus- 
sian kingdom, and Bussia entertained the view of getting entire 
possession of Poland ; both demands met with vehement opposition ; 
the dispute seemed to threaten a renewal of hostilities, and the 
armies were placed upon«a war footing. These appearances, and the 
proceedings in Erance, where the constitution granted by Louis 
XVIII. afforded but little defence against the reaction, awakened 
new hopes in Napoleon. The Bourbons betrayed by their proceedings 
"that they had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing." The 
memory of the Bevolution and of the empire was, as far as possible, 
destroyed. The tricoloured national cockade was thrust aside by the 
white ; the old aristocracy treated the new elevations with insolence 
and contempt, and drove them from the neighbourhood of the court, 
where the tone was given by the polite count of Artois and the gloomy 
duchess of Angouleme (daughter of Louis XVI.), whose heart was 
filled with hatred and venom against the men of the Bevolution. 
The guards were discharged, and their places supplied by well-paid 
Swiss ; the officers of the grand army were dismissed upon half-pay ; 
the Legion of Honour was rendered mean and contemptible by the 
distribution of innumerable crosses to the unworthy ; the compact 
with the banished emperor himself was not adhered to ; the clergy 
and the emigrants, who met with particular favour in the palace, 
began to dream of a restoration of their lost estates, tithes, and feudal 
privileges ; great discontent took possession of the nation ; the wish 
for a change again became lively, particularly when nearly 100,000 
Erench soldiers, some who had been prisoners of war, and others from 
foreign fortresses, returned to their country, and diffused their 
Buonapartist sentiments over the whole land. 

§ 534. When Napoleon heard of these errors of the Bourbons, when 
he learnt that there was a wish to restore their lands to the emi- 



NAPOLEON'S DEATH, AND THE RESTORATION. 409 

grants because " they kept the straight path," when he was instructed 
by Pouche, Davoust, Maret, the duchess of St. Leu, and others of his 
adherents who kept up a constant correspondence with him, of the 
disposition of the people, he resolved once more to try his fortune. 
March 1, H e landed on the south coast of Prance with a few 
1815. hundred men; he soon won all hearts to himself by some 

shrewdly planned and rapidly diifused proclamations. The tricolour 
was in a short time again predominant every where, the troops that 
were sent to oppose him deserted to him in crowds ; the citizens of 
-, . _ Grenoble threw open their gates when he approached 

their town, and Colonel Labedoyere placed the garrison 
at his disposal. It was in vain that Artois hasted to Lyons, and at- 
tempted to gain the soldiers by confidence. The shout of " Yive 
rempereur!" rang every where in his ears; and when even Ney, 
who had sworn to bring the usurper in chains to Paris, went over to 
-j. his former companion in arms, the Bourbons, helpless 

and confounded, quitted for the second time the land of 
their home. Louis XVIII., with a few faithful adherents, took up 
his residence in Ghent, whilst Napoleon once more entered the 
Tuileries, and formed a new ministry from among his followers. 
Thus began the reign of the hundred days, and Europe was threatened 
with fresh convulsions. Clubs were again formed, and the songs of 
the Revolution were again heard. But Napoleon had not yet laid 
aside his dislike to popidar movements, he also had learnt nothing 
and forgotten nothing. The imperial throne, with its splendour and 
its national nobility, was again to arise. This, however, was resisted 
T by the people. The new constitution, which was sworn 

to at the festival of the Champ de Mai, did not satisfy 
their demands. 

§ 535. These events produced the greatest confusion in the Vien- 
nese Congress, and restored the unanimity which had been dis- 
turbed. Austria and Russia did not at first appear disinclined to 
open fresh negotiations with Napoleon, who promised to abide by the 
conditions of the Peace of Paris and never again to disturb the tran- 
quillity of Europe, and to leave either him or his son in possession of 
the crown of Prance. But the activity of Talleyrand and the im- 
prudence of Murat again gave the victory to the principles of legi- 
timacy. Murat had at first joined tbe allies, and made war on the 
viceroy of Italy. But he soon felt that this was an unnatural pro- 
ceeding ; such treachery to the common cause revolted his honest 
military feelings. Napoleon's landing and triumphant course were 
the signal for his taking up arms. The emperor in vain warned him 
against over-hasty proceedings. "Without waiting to see what course 
events would take, Murat declared war against Austria, and called 
the people of Italy to arms to defend the unity and independence of 



410 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

May 23, the beautiful land of the Apennines. The battle of 

1815. Tolentino went against him ; his army melted away, and 

whilst he was flying in haste to the south of France, the Austrians 
marched into his capital and gave back his crown to its former 
possessor, Ferdinand. After the battle of Waterloo (§ 536) Murat 
wandered for some time around the south coast of France, only care- 
fully concealing himself from the pursuit of the Bourbons. At 
length he escaped to Corsica, and undertook from thence a voyage to 
Calabria for the purpose of exciting the people to revolt against 
Ferdinand. But he and his few followers were easily overpowered, 
and Murat paid the penalty of his attempt with his life. On the 
15th of October, Joachim Murat, who by his courage and good for- 
tune had been raised from the son of an innkeeper to be the king of 
the most beautiful of lands, was shot at Pizzo. 

§ 536. Napoleon's fate was decided even earlier. The European 
powers set upwards of half a million of men in motion against the 
outlawed usurper. Before they had all marched forth, Napoleon, 
after the opening of the chambers of Paris, advanced, with the sol- 
diers that flocked to him from all quarters, into the Netherlands, to 
make head against the armies of Wellington and Blticher. The 
j ,„ commencement of the campaign was favourable to the 

French. At Ligny the Prussians were forced back after 
the most desperate resistance ; whilst at Quatre Bras Ney resisted 
Wellington's army, composed of English, Dutch, Hanoverians, &c. 
Bliicher was wounded in the former place, and in the latter the 
chivalrous duke William of Brunswick found his death. Even on 
the decisive day the victory was long doubtful. It was not till the 
Prussians at the critical moment came to the assistance of the hardly- 
pressed army of Wellington, whilst marshal Grouchy, who had been 
dispatched by Napoleon to follow Bliicher, kept aloof from the field, 
that the French, despite the heroic bravery of the veteran warriors, 
, were totally defeated in the battle of Belle- Alliance or 

Waterloo. The struggle on the height of Mount St. 
Jean, from whence the French name the battle, was terrible ; and the 
words which were afterwards attributed to general Cambronne, " The 
guard dies, it never yields !" were retained by the nation in honour- 
able remembrance : whilst the disgrace which Bourmont incurred by 
his treachery, and Grouchy by his ambiguous conduct, could be obli- 
terated by no defence. Napoleon, pale and confused, allowed himself 
to be led out of the battle by Soult, and hastened to Paris. The 
flight soon became general; the whole of the artillery fell into the 
hands of the enemy ; only a fourth part of the brave army was able 
to escape. 

§ 537. The Chambers of Paris, in which Fouche was exhibiting a 
wretched display of intrigue and deceit, proposed to the emperor, on 



NAPOLEON'S DEATH, AND THE RESTORATION. 41 1 

his return, that he should renounce the crown. After some resist- 
ance, the humbled potentate yielded to the proposal ; he laid down 
June 22 ^ G S 0Yernmen ^ W favour of his son, Napoleon II., and 

then fled to Eochefort with the purpose of escaping 
to America, when he saw the victorious enemy a second time ap- 
proaching the walls of Paris. As the English, however, held the 
harbour blockaded, Napoleon, trusting to the generosity of the 
British people, sought shelter in one of their ships (Bellerophon) . 
But the statesmen who then held the rudder had no compassion for 
fallen greatness. Arrived at the coast of England, Napoleon received 
the terrible information that he must pass the remainder of his life 
as a state prisoner on the island of St. Helena. All protestations 
were useless : on the 18th of October he landed on the place of his 
banishment, in the midst of the Atlantic ocean. 

Here Napoleon lived, a chained Prometheus, separated from his 
friends, in an unhealthy climate, and under the rigid guardance of 
the unfriendly governor, Hudson Lowe. A few friends, among 
them general Bertrand and his family, Montholon, Las Casas, shared 
his banishment. Grief at his fall, want of his accustomed activity, 
and irritation at the unworthy treatment he received, broke his proud 
and strong spirit before its time. After six years of suffering be 
found that quiet in the grave, to which during life he had been a 
stranger. He died on the 5th of May, 1821. His ashes were after- 
wards conveyed to Paris (1842), and buried in the Hotel of Invalides. 
§ 538. After Napoleon's abdication, a provisional government was 
established under the direction of Pouche. The latter arranged with 
Wellington and Bliicher that no man was to be punished for his 
actions or opinions, and then surrendered the capital. A 
few days later the Bourbons again entered the Tuileries, 
under the guard of foreign bayonets. The people were quiet and 
indifferent. The armies were disbanded, the Chambers dissolved, and 
by a succession of proscriptions, a number of men who had hitherto 
guided the fate of Prance and of her armies, were either deprived of 
their offices, thrust into banishment, or, as in the case of Ney and 
Labedoyere, condemned to death 1 . The allied monarchs again esta- 

1 Labedoyere and Ney were condemned to death by the Court of Peers, and shot. 
The execution of the renowned marshal of the Moskwa, who, when he was shot, with 
military spirit gave the word of command himself, was looked upon as an infraction 
of the treaty arranged with Wellington, and brought great disgrace upon the court of 
Paris. Lavalette also, who in his capacity of director of the post had exerted himself 
for Napoleon's restoration, was condemned to death, but was delivered from prison 
by his faithful wife. Among the banished were to be found all the members of Na- 
poleon's family ; the marshals and statesmen who had joined him during the hundred 
days, as Soult, Maret, Thibaudeau, Mouton, &c. ; and finally, all the regicides, i. e. 
the members of the Convention who had voted for Louis XVI. 's death ; Fouche was 
one of these, and he was accordingly obliged to relinquish the office of minister of 



412 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Wished their residence in Paris, and assisted the Bourbons in settling 
November the new system. At length, when the Restoration ap- 
20, 1815. peared secure, the second Peace of Paris was arranged, 
by which Prance was confined to the boundaries of 1790, restored all 
the plundered treasures of art and science to their former owners, 
paid 700,000,000 francs for the expenses of war, and was obliged to 
support an allied army of 150,000 men in the frontier fortresses. 
These garrison troops remained for three years in the Prench 
fortresses. 



E. THE PEOPLE AND STATES OP EUROPE PROM THE 
HOLT ALLIANCE TO THE PRESENT TIME. 

1. THE HOLY ALLIANCE AND THE POSITION OE PARTIES. 

§ 539. The uppermost strata of society, which in the ordinary 
course of events suffer little from the mutations of life, had, through 
the Revolution and the military despotism of Napoleon, been visited 
by severe strokes of fortune. A more profound consideration of the 
revolutionary movement pointed to the supervision of a Higher Power, 
which brings to nought every impious endeavour, and every presump- 
tuous self-reliance. Religious feeling again returned to the bosoms 
of men, and gave predominance to piety and Christian faith among 
the upper classes. Penetrated by this feeling, the three allied mo- 
narchs, Alexander of Russia, Prancis of Austria, and Frederick Wil- 
liam III. of Prussia, before their departure from Paris, concluded the 
September Holy Alliance, which was joined by all the sovereigns of 
25, 1815. Europe, with the exception of the pope and the king of 
England. In this holy alliance, which was formed without reference 
to religious vigws, the three potentates swore, " That in accordance 
with the words of Holy Scripture, which commands all men to love 
each other as brethren, they would remain united in the bands of 
true and indissoluble brotherly love, that they would mutually help 
and assist each other ; that they would govern their people like 
fathers of families, and that they would maintain religion, peace, and 
justice." This alliance, beautiful in theory, was soon made the instru- 
ment of a faithless and liberty-endangering policy, which sought, by 
means of religion, to establish the absolutism of princes, and the 
omnipotence of governments, and to suppress the doctrine of the 
sovereignty of the people, and the democratical and constitutional 
forms of government which are its necessary result. "Whilst the 

police, which he had at first been allowed by the Bourbons to retain, and to retire 
abroad. Carnot, Sieyes, Cambaceres, and others did the same. Most of them 
resided in Brussels. 



FRANCE. 413 

Holy Alliance made use of Christianity to establish reactionary 
principles, it drew upon the whole work the reproach of hypocrisy, 
and the hatred of the people. 

§ 540. Whilst princes and governments were for the most part 
striving after absolute monarchical forms, the wishes of the people 
were directed to the establishment of constitutional governments. 
According to this form of ride which has grown up on the free soil of 
Britain, the right of voting taxes and of looking into the government, 
and a share in the legislation, belongs to the people as represented 
by their members of parliament. As the authority of the king and 
the rights and liberties of the people are alike discerned in this repre- 
sentative constitution, this form appeared best suited for civilized 
states. The chief efforts of the European nations were accordingly 
directed to the establishment or enlargement of this constitutional 
form of government, and public energy was almost exclusively turned 
to affairs of state and of the inner political life. Two powerful parties 
were formed, the one (called sometimes aristocratic, sometimes con- 
servative, sometimes servile) which wished to grant the people as 
few, the other (called democratic, liberal, and, when its views were 
extreme, radical) which wished to grant the people as many privileges 
as possible ; and whilst the former hindered, as far as it could, the 
introduction of constitutional forms of state, or, if introduced, 
attempted to deprive them, by any means, of their democratical 
elements ; the efforts of the latter were directed to the founding and 
developing of the constitutional life, and to increasing the privdeges 
of the people. Governments were in general in the hands of the 
former, consequently, the liberals formed the opposition. Of the five 
great European powers, England and Erance alone possessed consti- 
tutional governments ; Bussia, Austria, and Prussia held fast their 
monarchical absolutism. In Germany, Italy, and the Pyrenean 
peninsula, history turns principally upon these constitutional con- 
tests, by which now one, and now the other, of these state principles 
obtained the upper hand. 

2. FBANCE. 

§ 541. A remarkable revolution in opinions and mode of thinking 
took place in this much convulsed country after the Eestoration. The 
party of zealous royalists (Ultras, or " "White Jacobins," as they were 
called by their opponents) acquired such predominance, that the king 
had some difficulty in maintaining the constitutional charter. In the 
place of the freethinking opinions, and the hostility to the Church, 
which prevaded at a former period, a fanatical religious credulity 
made its appearance, which, combined with the most enthusiastic 
royalty, called into existence horrors which surpassed the 
' bloodiest deeds of the Eevolution. In Marseilles, Toulon, 



414 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

Mines, Toulouse, and other places, a furious and fanatical mob 
fell upon such inhabitants as were known for Protestants, Buona- 
partists, or republicans, and murdered hundreds of them (among 
others, marshal Brune) in a most barbarous manner. The assas- 
February 13, sination of the due de Berri, that nephew of the king 
1820. upon whom all the hopes of the Bourbons were placed, by 

Louvel, a political fanatic, facilitated the efforts of the reactionary 
party, at the head of which stood the count of Artois and the duke of 
Angouleme. The king found himself compelled to dismiss the mode- 
rate ministry of Decaze, and to consent to a limitation of 
the freedom of the person, of the press, and of the right 
of voting. The zeal of the royalists reached its climax 
under the ministry of Villele. The Chamber expelled 
the liberal deputy, Manuel, from their body, and the army, conducted 
by Angouleme, crossed the Pyrenees at the command of the Holy 
Alliance, for the purpose of restoring unlimited monarchy in Spain. 

§ 542. On the 16th September, 1824, Louis XVIII. concluded 
his varied and severely -tried existence. Stern experience had taught 
him compassion and moderation ; the impetuous violence of the other 
members of the royal family filled the heart of the dying man with 
melancholy auguries for the future. His brother the count of Artois, 
May 29, became king of Prance as Charles X. By his solemn 
1825. coronation and anointing in Rheims, he appeared to indi- 

cate that he intended to govern after the manner of the old " Most 
Christian" kings. He accordingly turned his affections towards the 
nobility and clergy, and surrendered himself entirely to the reaction- 
ary party, with the watchword "Throne and altar." The emigrants 
who had suffered losses during the Revolution received 1000 million 
francs from the royal chambers as an indemnification, and a series of 
laws in favour of the Church and of the Christian religion, announced 
the intention of the king to erect a mighty barrier against revolu- 
tionary notions by the ecclesiastical regeneration of Prance. Charles 
X. thought to establish this regeneration by founding rich prelacies, 
by restoring to the clergy their former influential position, by favour- 
ing the system of orders, and by bringing back that holiness of the 
Church which is founded upon works, together with the whole 
of the new Romish pomp. The Jesuits, who had long been re-esta- 
blished by the pope, returned, although not publicly ; they founded 
meetings for pious exercises (congregations), and attempted to get 
the education of youth into their hands. By these means the king 
st lengthened the liberal opposition, inasmuch as all men of philo- 
sophical education, every friend of light and of enlightenment, turned 
from a government that favoured obscurantism. Whilst the deluded 
monarch believed that he could impose the old fetters upon the minds 
of the people by inopportune missions and penitential processions, or 



SPAIN. PORTUGAL. ITALY. 415 

by coinpulsatory laws and limitations, the assiduous youth were 
listening to the liberal discourses and doctrines of the enlightened 
professors of the University of Paris (Guizot, Vdlemain, Pvoyer- 
Collard, &c), or reading the bold and free discussions of the opposi- 
tion press (Globe, National, ConstitutionneT), or delighting themselves 
with Beranger's songs of freedom, and the satires of the Hellenist, 
Paul Louis Courier, whilst the citizen read the widely-spread works 
of Voltaire and of the Encyclopaedists, or the histories and memorials 
of the Revolution, and of the renowned reign of Napoleon (Thiers, 
Mignet, &c). 

3. THE CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES IN THE PYBENEAN PENINSULA 

AND IN ITALY. 

§ 543. In Spain and Italy the new political ideas had made no pro- 
gress among the people, who were ruled by their priests ; they existed 
in the heads of the educated, and, as it was dangerous to avow them 
openly, they were disseminated in secret societies. Such political 
associations were the "Freemasons" in Spain and Portugal, and the 
" Carbonari " in Italy. Abolition of priestly power, introduction of 
free constitutional forms, enlightenment of the people, arousing 
patriotism and a feeling of nationality, were their great objects. 
Their influence was first attended with results in Spain. Ferdinand, 
a false and suspicious man, and a master in dissimulation, overthrew, 
after his return, the Cortes' constitution in Spain, and 
' brought back the unlimited monarchy of the old time 
and all its evils. Nobility and clergy again recovered their exemption 
from taxes ; the monasteries were restored ; the Jesuits ventured to 
make their appearance ; the Inquisition re-appeared, and with it the 
rack and all the horrors of a dark age. A frightful persecution now- 
arose, not only against all the adherents of Prance (Afrancesados), and 
all who had filled offices under Joseph, or had in any way served him, 
but against the chiefs and adherents of the Cortes, against the leaders 
of the bands who had shed their heart's blood for king and country, 
and who now claimed, as a well-deserved reward, a share in the 
government and civfl freedom. Many of these heroic warriors died 
by the hand of the executioner, others wandered in foreign countries 
as outlaws and fugitives ; those who remained behind concealed their 
views and their resentment in the silence of their own bosoms. A 
camarilla, consisting of the selfish privileged class, fanatical priests, 
obsequious courtiers and intriguing women, secured Ferdinand's con- 
fidence, and incited him to the most cruel persecution of every liberal. 
The government and the affairs of justice were in a most deplorable 
condition, the treasury was exhausted, despite the oppressive taxes, ■ 
trade was stagnant, the South American colonies renounced al- 
legiance to Spain, and engaged in a war which ended in the inde- 



416 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

pendence of the separate states, and the establishment of several 
republics. 

§ 544. At this juncture it happened that on the New Tear's Day 
of 1820 a military conspiracy broke out among the regiments assem- 
bled at Cadiz for embarkation for South America. The standard of 
rebellion was raised, and the constitution of the Cortes proclaimed. 
Colonel Eiego was the soul of the undertaking ; Quiroga, who had 
been liberated from prison, undertook the conduct of the whole. 
The insurrection soon spread to every quarter of Spain ; the constitu- 
tion of the year '12 (§ 517) was every where demanded, and 
nothing was left to the king but to yield to the demand, to summon the 
March 7 Cortes, and to swear to the constitution. This triumph 

1820. of the Spanish democrats excited their party in Portugal 
and Italy to imitation. Popular tumults took place in Lishon and 
Oporto, and resulted in the removal of Lord Beresford, who governed 
the country in the name of the king, who was still lingering in 
Brazil, the summoning of the Estates (Cortes), and the introduction 
January 26, °f a constitution on the model of that of Spain. John VI. 

1821. returned to Lisbon, and swore to the new constitution 
for Portugal and Brazil. The Carbonari excited a military conspi- 
racy in Naples, which soon made such progress, that king Ferdinand 
found himself compelled to consent to the introduction of the Spanish 
constitution. William Pepe and Carascosa, the heads of the con- 
T i 82n s pi rac y> marched in triumph at the head of the insurgent 

troops and the Carbonari, who had joined them, into 
Naples. A revolutionary movement broke out also in Piedmont 
against the absolute monarchy, supported by the aristocracy and 
priesthood, in consequence of which Victor Emanuel ab- 
dicated, and the Spanish constitution was introduced into 
the kingdom of Sardinia also. 

§ 515. The chiefs of the Holy Alliance, disturbed by this new 
revolutionary spirit that seemed to have seized upon the German 
youth also, embraced the resolution, at the instigation of Metternich, 
January, °f suppressing the liberal movement. At the congress of 

1821. Laybach, at which king Eerdinand of Naples was also 

present -by the invitation of the monarchs, it was determined to 
overthrow the constitutional government in Naples by violence. 
Eerdinand approved the proposal. An Austrian army was marched 
in : the dastardly forces of Pepe and Carascosa were quickly over- 
powered, and either dispersed or forced to surrender, upon which the 
king again abolished the constitutional government. From this time 
priestly power and absolute monarchy, supported by mercenary troops 
and a system of police, were united together for the suppression of 
every movement of freedom by terror and the bondage of the intellect. 
This result decided the fate of the Piedmontese constitution. It 



SPAIN. PORTUGAL. ITALY. 417 

is true that the enthusiastic liberals under Santa Rosa resisted their 
. .. _ enemies at Novara not without glory ; but their strength 
was soon broken. Turin and Alessandria were occupied 
by the Austrians ; and unlimited monarchy in its severest form, and 
with all the horrors of the reaction, was again restored in Sardinia. 

§ 546. Not much more splendid was the end of the Spanish Cortes. 
When the liberals abused their victory, placed undue restrictions 
upon the kingly power, and proceeded with great violence against 
the cloisters, the privileged classes, and the ancient and traditionary 
privileges and usages, the priests and the adherents of absolute 
power stirred up the people to resistance. A bloody civil war once 
more threatened to tear the unhappy country to pieces. At this 
October, juncture, the members of the Holy Alliance at the Con- 

1822. gress of Yerona required the Cortes in Madrid to alter 
the constitution and to give the king greater powers. The Cortes 
rejected this demand with defiance. A French army, under the corn- 
February, mand of the duke of Angouleme, now marched over the 

1823. Pyrenees. It was in vain that the Cortes summoned the 
nation to arms ; constitutional freedom was a word without meaning 
for people led by priests and monks, and the new system was opposed 
to their habits and feelings ; the popular war, the old renowned guerilla, 
on which the Cortes had placed its confidence, did not arise ; the 
people and the camarilla saluted the French as deliverers from the 
detested rule of the freemasons. It was in vain that a few leaders, 
like Mina in Barcelona and Quiroga in Leon, resisted with courage 
and spirit the foreign army ; the soldiers showed little love for fight- 
ing, and sought to secure themselves betimes by capitulations. The 
French marched triumphantly into Madrid, and, as the Cortes and king 
had fled to the south, they appointed a regency. The strong city of 
Cadiz was the last place of refuge for the friends of the constitution — 
August 5, the French appeared before the town. The courage of 
1823. the members of the Cortes sank ; instead of burying 
themselves beneath the ruins of the town, as they had formerly 
grandiloquently expressed it, they concluded a treaty with the be- 
siegers, by which they consented to their own dissolution and set the 
king at liberty. Ferdinand VII. was now replaced in the fulness of 
his power by foreign bayonets ; the constitution and all its arrange- 
ments fell into desuetude, and the apostolic party let loose all the 

demons of rage and vengeance against its opponents. 

Biego and many of his confederates died by the hands of 
the executioner, thousands wandered about in foreign countries 
as starving and houseless fugitives and outlaws, and an equal number 
were compelled to expiate in mouldy dungeons the crime of having 
attempted to rob the people of the constitutions and institutions to 
which three hundred years of depotism had accustomed them. 

"E e 



4 1 8 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

§ 547. The lamentable end of the Cortes government of Spain in- 
spired the queen of Portugal (sister of Ferdinand VII.) and her 
second son, Don Miguel, with the project of getting rid, at the same 
time, of the detested constitution by an act of violence. They induced 
the weak king, John VI., to abolish the constitution of the Cortes, 
and to sanction the persecution of the constitutionalists and the free- 
masons. Shortly after this, Don Miguel excited a rebellion against 
his own father with the purpose of obtaining the regency, but gained 
April, 1824. instead a sentence of banishment from the country. 
March 10, John VI. died two years afterwards. His eldest son, 
182(>. Don Pedro, who, being constitutional emperor of Brazil, 

could not at the same time become king of Portugal, made over the 
government of the mother country to his daughter, Donna Maria da 
Gloria, who was a minor, and granted the Portuguese a liberal consti- 
tution. His brother, Don Miguel, having returned from banishment, 
succeeded some time after in again overthrowing this constitution by 
the aid of the apostolic party. He robbed his niece of her right to 
the throne, had himself proclaimed absolute king, and 
proceeded by banishment, imprisonment, and death against 
the friends and adherents of constitutional order. But his reign was 
but short. Don Pedro, compelled in Brazil to surrender his crown 
to his son, who was under age, landed in Portugal with the soldiers 
a.d. 1832— ne had raised, and reduced his tyrannical bixrther to such 
1834. extremities in a war of two years' duration, that he at 

length renounced the crown and retired abroad. Upon this, Pedro 
again restored the Cortes government, which, after his early death, 
however, underwent many attacks and alterations. 

4. GREAT BRITAIN. 

§ 548. England had come forth from the long struggle with Prance 
powerful and victorious. She had destroyed the fleets of other na- 
tions, and put her own marine on such a footing that her empire of 
the sea was incontestable ; she had increased her colonies in the "West 
Indies, had raised Canada, had planted colonies in the west and south 
of Africa, and had created an empire in the East Indies, after the 
conquest of the mighty sultan Tippoo Saib, that far surpassed the 
mother country in size and population, and was an inexhaustible 
source of trade and commerce. Distant islands, opened to the view 
of the astonished world by daring navigators, like Cook and others, 
bowed themselves beneath the sceptre of the island empress of the 
sea. The possession of Gibraltar and Malta, the protective govern- 
ment of the Ionian Isles, the free passage through the Dardanelles, 
secured to her, after the peace of Paris, the dominion of the Mediter- 
ranean and the intercourse with the Levant. By her firmly-established 
constitution, with the liberty of the press and of speech, and the 



GREAT BRITAIN. 4 [9 

narrowly defined limits between the rights of the king and of the 

people, England excited the envy of other nations. But with all this 

power and prosperity without, the state was suffering from incurable 

wounds. 1. Whilst a small proportion of the people had amassed 

enormous wealth, the great bulk was sunk in the most oppressive 

poverty. The expensive land and naval wars and the enormous 

subsidies that the government sent to the Continent had raised the 

national debt to such a sum that the yearly interest amounted to 

thirty -four million pounds. This burden of debt, together with an 

extravagant court and excessive salaries, increased the expenditure of 

the state to a degree that the necessary sums could only be obtained 

by a perpetually increasing taxation of articles of trade, necessaries 

of life, income (income-tax), houses, and landed property. This 

occasioned the impoverishment of the small land proprietors and of 

tradesmen with moderate capitals. The lands fell into the hands of 

the rich nobles, who discovered the means of increasing their incomes 

by raising rents and preventing the importation of foreign corn by 

the corn-laws. Trade fell into the hands of the rich manufacturers, 

who by enlarging their business outdid men of smaller means ; the 

middle class of citizens decreased, whde the number of artisans, who 

lived from hand to mouth, increased to a formidable amount. Heavy 

poor-rates imposed upon the public, and occasional contributions by 

the government, were not sufficient to counteract the evil. The 

lower orders, excited by want and misery, made repeated attempts to 

improve their condition by insurrections, but their illegal proceedings 

invariably resulted in then own injury. The unarmed crowd was 

easily dispersed by the military; but the sanguinary punishments 

,„,„ inflicted upon the insurgents of Manchester brought 
A.D. 1819. r ... ° _ , ■■ ■ ■ O 

severe censure upon the government. The lower classes 
soon began to strive for political influence also. To give themselves 
a voice in the legislature they demanded universal suffrage, yearly 
parliaments, and vote by ballot. They laid down their principles in a 
people's charter, from whence they received the name of Chartists. 
It is to their exertions that the relaxation of the corn-laws, by which 
,„.„ the introduction of foreign corn was facilitated, is to be 

a.d. 1842. 

ascribed. 
Court and § 549. 2. After the severe contest against Napoleon there 

Government, came a period of torpor in England. George IV., a king 
sunk in vice and pleasure, who in his youth had gone with the oppo- 
sition, put his confidence in the cold-blooded Tories who had grown 
grey in the state-wisdom of Pitt, and turned away his eyes and his 
heart from the people. The latter rewarded him with aversion and 
hatred, especially when he gave celebrity to the first year of his 
independent reign by a scandalous action for divorce, 
before the Upper House, against his wife, Caroline of 
e e 2 



420 TIIE LATEST PERIOD. 

Brunswick, who was living in unwilling separation from him. "When 
the queen died in the following year, the sympathy and 
compassion of the nation followed her to the grave, little 
as her conduct or morals were deserving of praise. Castlereagh, the 
ancient associate of George, and the supporter of a false and faithless 
Au °-ust 12, policy, died by his own hand during a paroxysm of melan- 
1822. choly. This was a great shock to the king, who was 

burdened by so many sins of youth, and made him shun society. He 
passed the last years of his life in gloomy retirement, whilst the great 
statesman, Canning, who approached the principles of the Whigs, 
restored its former pre-eminence to the insular empire of England. 
"When George IV. 's only daughter, the intelligent and amiable 
princess Charlotte (wife of Leopold of Coburg, afterwards king of the 
Belgians), died young and without children, William IV., the king's 
brother, a plain, homely man, ascended the throne after George's 
William IV. death. Under him, the Whigs got the management of 
a.d. 1830— affairs into their hands, and the important measure of 
parliamentary reform, by which the elections for parlia- 
ment were arranged afresh according to the number of the population, 
and the right of suffrage was made dependent upon a certain income, 
March 1 was carried after the most violent opposition, and formed 

1831. the triumph of the middle class over the aristocracy. 

August, 1835. Shortly after this, slave emancipation, at which Wilber- 
force and other philanthropists had been working for years, was 
carried. England, after vast sums paid in indemnifying the planters, 
set the slaves at liberty in her colonies, and has since endeavoured 
with all her strength to induce other nations to a similar step, and to 
June 20 entirely suppress the slave traffic. After William IV., 

1837. his niece, Victoria, married since (the 10th of February, 

1810) to prince Albert of Coburg, received the crown of England. 
Under her government the great statesman, Sir Robert Peel, at- 
tempted to give a fresh impulse to trade by moderating the import 
duties. Since then "free-trade" has been the watch-word of the 
day. 

§ 550. Ireland to the present hour is the sore spot in 
the body politic of England. The maltreatment of 
former generations has produced a gulf between England and Ireland 
which never permitted a perfect union between two people different 
in their nature, religion, and institutions. Two things in especial, 
produced by an old injustice, excited the hatred of the irritable Irish 
— the harsh treatment of the poor peasants by their noble English- 
derived landlords ; and the unnatural condition of the Church, where 
Anglican priests are in possession of the Irish Church temporalities, 
whilst the poor Catholic population are obliged to maintain then- 
unpaid clergy from their necessity. The complaints of the Irish were 



GERMANY. 421 

unheard ; the insurrections that were attempted were suppressed, and 
increased the oppression. It was not until admission into the 
English parliament was granted to Irish Catholics by the 
Emancipation Act that the Irish people had an oppor- 
tunity of demanding an abolition of abuses. Daniel O'Connell, who 
now entered parliament with a "tail " of more than forty similarly- 
minded Irishmen, threatened a Eepeal of the Union, unless attention 
was paid to the righteous demands of the Irish people. The increas- 
ing poverty which, owing to the failure of the potato crop, produced 
pestilence and famine, required stringent remedies for the prevailing 
abuses. Owing to the irritable and excitable nature of the Irish, it 
was an easy task for the great popular orator and demagogue, O'Con- 
nell, to keep the country in a perpetual ferment, and, by the watch- 
word of " repeal," to direct the whole energy of the people to a single 
object. Eepeal associations were formed in every spot and corner, 
with a common fund for furthering the aims of O'Connell; the 
Catholic priesthood, who exercised an unlimited power over the ignorant 
people, were in his service : his word was law in Ireland. The prin- 
cipal demand of the Irish was the abolition of the tithes, which were 
paid in Ireland to the English clergy. "When their proposals were 
not received by the English parliament, the tenants refused to pay 
the tithes, and opposed the distraints ; and, when the English had 
recourse to force, they employed force against them. Bands of armed 
men marched through the country, marking their course with blood 
and fire. These things pressingly admonished the government to 
give its best attention to " starving and revolutionary Ireland, the 
land of passions and of misery." The country was threatened with a 
state of warfare by the Irish Coercion Bill, in order to maintain 
obedience by terror ; and an attempt was made by the Irish Church 
Bill, and the so-called appropriation clause, to abolish or moderate 
the Church payments of the tenants, and to apply a portion of the 
Church property to secular purposes, namely, to the improvement of 
public education. But this project encountered such resistance from 
the High- Church party and the aristocratic Tories that it was not till 
after a parliamentary contest of a twelvemonth that the Tithes Bill 
was passed, and even then in a mutilated shape. The High-Church 
opposition formed the so-called Orange clubs, which attempted to 
frustrate all concessions to the Irish, and kept religious and national 
hatred in constant activity. 

5. GERMANY. 

§ 551. G-ermany, after the Congress of Vienna, was weaker and 
less united than she had been during the empire. It is true that the 
number of independent principalities and states had been lessened by 
more than a hundred, and that the bishoprics, abbeys, and imperial 



422 TIIE LATEST PERIOD. 

towns deprived of their independent position ; but, on the other 
hand, thirty-eight territories which had been included in the German 
Union received sovereign powers, as far as their internal affairs were 
concerned. In place of the old imperial Diet appeared the Federative 
Diet of Franlvfort-on-the-Maine, composed of representatives of the 
different governments, under the presidentship of Austria. But, as 
this assembly was entirely directed by the wishes of single govern- 
ments, it had no independent power ; and the German Union was an 
impotent member among European states, dependent upon the influ- 
ence of the two great powers, Austria and Prussia, which assumed 
the first rank, in virtue of then German provinces. Even foreign 
kingdoms sent representatives to the Frankfort Diet, as Denmark for 
Holstein, and the Netherlands for Luxemburg. This powerless 
condition of Germany gave as little satisfaction abroad as the 
internal arrangements sufficed at home. Instead of a strong union, 
with a united federative government and a popular representation, 
such as patriotic men had hoped and striven for, the creation of the 
Viennese Congress was a union formed of a number of sovereign 
states, in which the governments, but not the people, were repre- 
sented ; and the 13th article of the Union Act, by which a general 
promise was given of the introduction of a state constitution, without 
any distinct notice of the time and manner of its accomplishment, did 
not satisfy the expectations of the people. As Prussia, where the 
men of the retrograde movement, Haller, Schmalz, and others soon 
obtained the upper hand of the patriots of the war of liberty, delayed 
bringing forward the promised state constitution, and at length, 
instead of the desired imperial estates, granted only provincial estates 
with consulting voices, without either publicity or general interest, 
the discontent of the German people became every day greater. 
Austria, under the influence of Metternich, was governed in a spirit 
of complete absolutism, and kept as far aloof from Germany as 
possible ; and Prussia gave herself up more and more to the same 
news, and allowed herself to be made the instrument of the execution 
of most unpopular measures. As there was no general system of 
management or debate, the constitutions that were gradually intro- 
duced into Sachsen- Weimar, Baden, "Wirtemberg, Bavaria, Hessen, 
and many other small states, tinned out very different from each 
other, so that in this respect also Germany appeared torn and divided. 
And then the duties between different countries, which acted as a bar 
to their intercourse ! It seemed as though Germany was about to be 
broken up into its separate races and states ! 

§ 552. This state of things filled the German people with discon- 
tent, and shook their confidence in the patriotism of the governments. 
The liberal party, which was aiming at a progressive development of 
state affairs in a democratic direction, and kept alive the idea of 



GERMANY. 423 

G-erman unity, gained ground daily. But, above all, the German 
youth, who had been filled with an admiration of the middle ages by the 
new romantic poetry (§ 556), were dissatisfied with the present. They 
longed for the empire of the middle age, and for the former unity and 
greatness of Germany ; and sought to give life to the new ideas of 
popular government under the old German forms and titles. "With- 
out clearness of aim, and without knowledge or respect for obstacles, 
the youths who in the German high schools had formed the fraternal 
alliance of the " General Burschenschaft," strove after an ideal world 
and state creation - upon the old German system. This feeling first 
October 1 8, displayed itself during the festival of the Wartburg. On 
1817- the day of the battle of Leipsic, a festival was celebrated 

as an introduction to the 300th anniversary of the Reformation, 
which is always solemnized with great enthusiasm in Protestant 
Germany, and at the same time, in remembrance of the bloody 
struggle for liberty, by a number of students at the Wartburg, near 
Eisenach, at which some fiery speeches were made by the young men, 
and at the conclusion, following the example of Luther, certain 
writings of Kotzebue, Kamptz, Haller, Jarke, and others, which were 
offensive to their views, together with some symbols of an antiquated 
and feudal period, as pigtails, breast-laces, corporals' canes, were, with 
youthful wantonness, committed to the flames. If an undue import- 
ance was attached by the government to this occurrence, yet it is not 
to be wondered at that the bloody deed of one of these confederates 
of the Wartburg, George Sand, should be looked upon as the act of a 
great political conspiracy, and give rise to a series of legal investiga- 
tions and prosecutions, on account of "demagogic intrigues." Sand 
of Wunsiedel, a pious and patriotic youth, but full of fanaticism and 
governed by vanity, embraced the criminal resolution of killing 
the Russian councillor, Augustus von Kotzebue, who was suspected 
March 23, °f endangering Germany's freedom and politic develop- 
1819. ment by conveying information to St. Petersburg, for the 

purpose of ridding the German nation from this " Russian spy," this 
" traitor to the country." He approached the unsuspecting man in 
Mannheim with a letter, and pierced him through with a stroke of 
a dagger as he was reading it. The attempt to kill himself was not 
successful. Sand, recovered from his wounds, ended his life on the 
September, scaffold. After this followed the decrees of Carlbad, 
1819. which restrained the freedom of the press by the censor- 

ship, established a court of investigation in Mayence, for the sup- 
pression of " demagogic intrigues," interdicted the alliances of the 
Sursclienschaft with their gymnasia, placed the universities under the 
supervision of special government officials, and finally gave uncon- 
ditional validity to the resolutions of the Diet for all governments. 
Bounds were at the same time set to the democratical spirit of the 



424 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

South German provinces by the concluding act of Vienna. 

' Prussia, which had been so long the hope and confidence 
of all German patriots, now took the lead in the reactionary and 
unpopular measures. Men like Arndt, Jahn, &c, whose voices and 
example had had such influence in time of need, were now brought to 
judgment as favourers of demagogic intrigues, deprived of then- 
offices, and watched by the police. From this time the unity of 
Germany was looked upon as a dream ; he who expressed a wish of 
the sort made himself suspected of demagogic efforts. Every separate 
state was regarded as an independent whole, and governed without 
relation to the general interest of the country ; and, although many 
excellent arrangements were adopted in the government, administra- 
tion of justice, and the affairs of religion and education, little or 
nothing was done for aroushig the feelings of nationality and pa- 
triotism. 

6. Greece's struggle eor liberty. 

§ 553. As the public energies of the nations of Europe were held 
in firm bonds by the Holy Alliance, the news of Greece's rise against 
the Turks produced great enthusiasm, and aroused a fresh political 
interest among the torpid people. Alexander Ypsilanti, a Moldavian 
noble in the military service of Russia, was the first who rose up in 
his country as a liberator, and published a call, which referred to the 
protection of Russia, to his countrymen, to shake off the Turkish 
yoke. A society, Hetceria, with widely-spread ramifications, the 
secret object of which was a separation from Turkey, came to the aid 
of the project. In a short time, Morea (Peloponnesus), Livadia 
(Hellas), Thessaly, and the Greek islands, were in arms. But the 
expected aid of Russia did not arrive. "Willingly as the 
emperor Alexander would have favoured the movement, 
both from religious sympathy and political interest, the influence of 
Metternich, who at the Congress of Laybach placed the insurrection 
of the Greeks on a par with the simultaneous democratical movements 
in Italy and Spain, prevented any support being given to them. The 
Turks foamed with rage, and took a bloody vengeance. The Patriarch 
of Constantinople, the supreme head of the Greek Church, was torn 
from the high altar on Easter-day by the infidel Mahommedans, and 
hung up along with his bishops at the principal door of his church ; 
the greater number of the Greek families of the capital died by vio- 
lence, or were obliged to wander forth as beggars into banishment. 
The sacred band of Greeks, under the conduct of Ypsilanti, suc- 
June 19, cumbed to the superior power of the Turks in "Wallachia, 
1821. and were totally annihilated in the desperate battle of 

Dragaschan, where they fought with the heroic courage of a Leonidas. 
Ypsilanti fled to Austria, but was doomed to pine for years in a 



GREECE'S STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 425 

Hungarian fortress. The fall of these magnanimous warriors showed 
that they were animated by a different spirit from that of the Spanish 
and Italian champions of freedom. 

§ 554. A frightful national war now broke out in all quarters of 
Greece. In Morea, the wild and warlike Mainottes of the Taygetus 
rose up under the conduct of Mauromichali and Kolokrotoni, the 
other inhabitants of Pelopennesus shortly after followed, restrained 
to a more systematic plan of warfare by Demetrius Tpsilanti, the 
brother of Alexander. At the same time the Greeks in Livadia and 
the islands fought with glory and success ; their valour recalled to 
recollection the deeds of their ancestors, little of the Hellenic blood as 
may flow in the veins of the modern Greeks. Europe gazed in 
sympathy upon this gigantic war in the east, and hastened to collect 
money and troops by means of Philhellenic unions to support the 
courage of the warriors, who, in the beginning of the year 1822, had 
united themselves into a republic under Tpsilanti and Maurokordato. 
The object was to support civilization and Christianity against savage 
barbarians. Whilst the princes of the Holy Alliance, from a regard 
for their ease, were exposing a Christian people to the attacks of 
infidel bands of murderers, crowds of foreign Philhellenists, under the 
conduct of JSTormann and others, marched to the ancient birth-place 
of Christian civilization. The English poet, Byron, devoted his talents, 
April 19, his wealth, and his energy, to the affairs of Greece, where 
1824. the climate and exertion occasioned his death. 

Despite the dissensions and selfishness of the Greek leaders, their 
arms were generally successful till the June of 1825. At that period 
the Porte obtained a powerful support in Mehemet Ali, who, as 
Pashaw of Egypt, destroyed the power of the Mamalukes, and established 
an army and government upon the plan of those of Europe, by which 
means Western civdization and Oriental despotism were placed in 
horrible conjunction. This man sent his son, Ibrahim, with a con- 
siderable army of mingled materials to Peloponnesus, on the busi- 
ness of the sultan. The small and disunited body of Greeks was 
unable to resist him ; one town after another fell into his hands ; the 
march of Ibrahim and his brutal troops proceeded onwards over blood, 
corpses, and burning houses. Peloponnesus and the coasts of Livadia 
were frightfully ravaged for two years from the strong city of Tripolizza, 
which they had chosen as their point of support, whilst cabinets were 
in vain endeavouring to restrain the war by diplomatic negotiations. 
April 22, The fall of Missolonghi first produced a change in affairs. 
1826. When, namely, the hardly-pressed town was unable any 

longer to defend itself, the heroic inhabitants with their wives and 
children made a sally upon the beleaguring enemy ; the third part 
were slain, Missolonghi disappeared in flames, and all who remained 
in it perished beneath the ruins. The cry of anger that passed 



426 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

through all Europe at this event, awakened the governments from their 
lethargy. 

December 1 § 555. A short time before this, the emperor Alexander 
1825. had descended to his grave, and as the elder brother Con- 

stantine had already renounced the throne, his brother Nicola swayed 
the Eussian sceptre after the bloody suppression of a military con- 
spiracy that was to have changed the government and the succession 
to the throne. In England the rudder of state was intrusted to the 
skilful hands of the high-minded Canning, who in the maturity of his 
life had not forgotten the dreams of his youth or his enthusiasm for 
the liberation of Greece. In France the government thought itself 
obliged to pay some attention to the loud clamours of the Philhelle- 
nists, especially as at this time the bloody destruction of 
June, 1826. ^ Jannissaries in Constantinople, by which 15,000 
Mahommedans died a violent death, filled civilized Europe with horror 
at the inhumanity of the Turks. At the proposal of Canning, there- 
fore, the three European powers, Eussia, England, and France, con- 
cluded an alliance by which they agreed to employ their common ex- 
ertions to induce the Porte to allow the Greeks their liberty. A com- 
bined fleet appeared in the waters of the Morea, and demanded from 
Ibrahim the evacuation of the peninsula ; upon the rejection of this 
October 20, demand followed the battle of Navarino, where the Turko- 
1827- Egyptian fleet was annihilated by the European. This 

decision came so quickly that the allied powers were astonished at 
the "unexpected event." The battle of Navarino consequently 
August 8, remained without results, and as after Canning's death 
1827- the Eno-lish, who were anxious about their trade, showed 

themselves more favourably disposed to the Porte, the resolute sultan 
Mahmud remained firm to his purpose of not giving the Greeks their 
liberty, and behaved so insolently to the Eussians that they declared 
war against him. This roused the hopes of the Greeks. Whilst the 
forces of the Osmans were marching into the lands of the Danube, 
Ibrahim was at length compelled by the French fleet to evacuate the 
Morea, whereupon Capo d'lstria from Corfu, was appointed president 
July, 1829. °f the Greek state. The daring military achievements of 
September the Eussians, who under Diebitsch (Sabalkanski) sur- 
14, 1829. mounted the Balkan, at length compelled the Porte, by 
the peace of Adrianople, to grant the Eussians favourable conditions, 
and to acknowledge the independence of Greece. But as it "was long 
before the question of boundaries could be settled, the war still con- 
tinued for some time in Greece, during which time the admiral 
Miaulis blew up the Greek fleet rather than allow it to fall into 
strange hands. At length the powers agreed in London to form a 
constitutional kingdom out of Morea, Livadia, a part of Thessaly, 
Eubcea, and the Cyclades, over which (as Capo d'lstria had in the 



THE NEW ROMANTIC LITERATURE. 497 

mean time been murdered by the brothers Mauromichali) Otto I. of 
the royal house of Bavaria was placed as king. . Since 
then Greece has striven to elevate herself to the position 
of a civilized state, the forms of which she has assumed, without how- 
ever being able to free herself entirely from the conditions of barba- 
rism and a life of plunder. At a later period, the Greeks, from 
national jealousy, drove away the German foreigners that 
had come in the train of the court, and thus deprived 
themselves, at the same time, of the supports of modern civilization. 

7. THE KEW ROMANTIC LITERATURE. 

§ 556. The years of the Holy Alliance were the flourishing period 
of romantic literature and art, the chief creators and supporters of 
The Schle- which were the brothers, Augustus William and Frederick 
gels. Schlegel, the poet Novalis, and Ludwig Tieck. They 

Novalis. quitted the path of religious illumination and of political 

candour, and escaped to the middle age and the religious 
* contemplation of the East. The faith in miracles and the 
religious mysticism of an early period of Christianity, the love 
affairs and the sensual religious worship of the departed days of 
chivalry, the sacred art of the middle ages, the flowery poetry of the 
East, the popular songs and the meditative world of fable of the 
distant past, permanently engaged their interest. It was for this 
reason that their views were directed to the forgotten productions of 
the literature of romance, whilst, following the example of Herder, 
they collected and elaborated the legends, traditions, and popular 
songs of German antiquity, and then sought to introduce the chival- 
rous poetry of the Italians and Spaniards into Germany by means of 
translations ; and drew the mythology, and the poetry founded upon 
it, of the East and of the Scandinavian North, within the circle of 
their activity. The profound Dante, the profuse Shakspeare, the 
Spanish poet Calderon, Cervantes, and many others, were admirably 
translated by the romancists, and naturalized in Germany. The 
Schlegels in particular distinguished themselves by their critical and 
sesthetical writings, by their intelligent researches in the region of 
the history of literature, by translations, and by references to the 
language, literature, and "wisdom" of the Indians. Tieck obtained 
his greatest fame by his elaboration of old popular legends and tales 
(Genoveva, Kaiser Octavianus, Eortunatus, &c.) ; and the prematurely 
departed Erancis von Hardenburg (Novalis), by his melancholy poems 
and poetical essays (" Bliithenstaub," " Spiritual Songs,"), and the 
unfinished romance, Henry of Offcerdingen. In the same spirit sang 
the lyric poets, Matthison, Chamisso, Mas von Schenkendorf, the 
romance writer Arnim, de la Motte Eouque, Clemens Brentano, 
Hoffmann, &c. The orientalist, Hammer-Purgstall, excited by the 



4,28 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

romancists, undertook the translation of the Arabian and Persian poets ; 
and the great collective work, " Fundgruben des Orients;" and Fr. 
Biickert, renowned as a lyric poet (" Harnessed Sonnets," "Eastern 
Boses,"), brought the art of translation and imitation to perfection 
("Nal and Damijanti," "Die Makamen des Hariri"). The brothers 
Grimm (Jacob and William), were excited by the romancists to their 
successful inquiries into the old German language and literature, and to 
their collection of popular and domestic tales. At the same time the 
romancists elevated poetry and literature generally to a loftier station, 
gave it dignity and nobleness, and awakened love and sensibility for 
the fine arts ; on the other hand they aiforded pernicious examples, 
in regard to public morality and decency of life. An unbridled and 
restless life of wandering and travels, to which most of them gave 
themselves up without restraint, favoured the sensual appetites and 
passions. TJnmisled by the romancists, and treading in the path of 
Schiller, Theodore Korner, Ludwig Uhland, Moriz Arndt, H. Zschokke, 
Senme, and others, composed poetry ; and the lyric and dramatic wri- 
ters in the spirit of Aristophanes, Augustus von Platen (" The Ro- 
mantic CEdipus," "The Fatal Pork"), paid homage to the spirit 
of progress. The party of the liberals and the great mass of the 
German people took most pleasure in the freer, if less vigorous poetry 
of the latter. 

8. THE JULY REVOLUTION OE PARIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

§ 557. Charles X. proceeded in the path of reaction without 

regard to public opinion. The liberal ministry of Martignac had been 

obliged, since January, 1828, to yield to an ultra royalist one under 

August 8 the presidentship of Poliguac, and when the Chambers, in 

182D. their opening address, expressed their discontent at the 

policy of the government, they were dissolved and a new election 

followed. In vain the men of the opposition re-appeared in increased 

numbers, and confirmed the mistrust of the people in the new 

ministry. Charles X. would not learn wisdom. He 

' vainly hoped that the military renown which the French 

troops had gained about this time in Africa, where, to revenge the 

insults offered by the Dey of Algiers to the ships and consid of France, 

they had taken possession of his capital, and planted the 

French banners upon the battlements of the old city of 

robbers, would have produced a favourable feeling in the nation. 

Scarcely had the " Moniteur ' ' published the three celebrated ordinances, 

by which the freedom of the press was suspended, the 

new Chambers dissolved, and the order of election of the 

next, arbitrarily changed, before the July Revolution broke out, by 

which the people, after an heroic contest of three days, obtained their 

release from the royal house of Bourbon, and from the rule of the 



JULY REVOLUTION OF PARIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 499 

priests. The deputies who were present in Paris established a pro- 
visional government on the 29th July whilst the contest in the 
streets was at the hottest, in which the banker Lafitte, Casimir 
Perier, Odillon-Barrot, and others, bore a part, until the constitu- 
tional party triumphed over the republican, and Louis-Philippe, duke 
of Orleans, was named regent of the empire. When it was too late 
Charles X. offered to recal the obnoxious ordinances, and to summon 
a popular ministry — but he was obliged for the third time to go into 
exile with his family, whilst his more sagacious relative, Louis- 
Philippe, after he had sworn to observe the hastily revised charter, 
ascended the throne as king of the Prench. The restoration of the 
national colours, and the re-establishment of the National Guard, 
under the command of Lafayette, marked the commencement of the 
new citizen monarchy established by the people. Charles X. died in 
the year 1836 at Grorz. 

§ 558. The revolution of July occasioned the total fall of the Holy 
Alliance, which had already received a shock by the death of Alex- 
ander, and called forth a movement throughout all Europe which 
produced an important change in affairs. It is true that the govern- 
ment of the " citizen king " soon assumed a pacific attitude in regard 
to other states, and the liberals who had arrived at power in Paris 
preferred moderate and conciliatory modes of proceeding to waging 
war, and attempted to win over all the moderate and undecided to 
the support of the existing system, by establishing the principle of 
"the right mean;"- but the tumult of the first storm was strong- 
enough to give a severe shock to the artful structure of the Viennese 
Congress. In Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy, &c, insurrections 
broke out that could only be suppressed or composed after a two 
years' contest ; and though the influence of the absolute powers of 
the East — Russia, Austria, and Prussia — was strong enough to pre- 
serve or bring back the old system in most states, free opinions, from 
this time, acquired greater importance, and public opinion increased 
to a power that bade defiance to all efforts of " state police " and 
"bureaucracy." In the West of Europe, owing to the influence of 
England and Erance, coustitutional government and the civil freedom 
which is allied to it maintained the pre-eminence. 

§ 559. The Revolution in Belgium was the first consequence 
of the Parisian July days. The Congress of Vieuna, without regard 
to religion, language, or national interest, had united the Elemish 
and Brabant provinces to the States-General of Holland in one king- 
dom of the Netherlands. The Hollanders regarded themselves as 
the rulers, they compelled the Belgians not only to share the great 
national debt and the high taxes, but attempted to force their own 
language and laws upon them, and placed the education of the 
Catholic people under the supervision of Protestant courts. When 



430 TIIE LATEST PERIOD. 

the press allowed itself to adopt a hostile tone against the govern- 
ment, the writers were proceeded against with fine, imprisonment, 
and banishment. Upon this, the Trench liberal party, which was 
struggling for a free political life, and which was in alliance with the 
chiefs of the Paris opposition, formed a confederacy with the Catholic 
ultramontane party, which demanded freedom of education, against 
the Dutch government, which the king in his speech from the throne 
designated as "infamous." The dissatisfaction produced by this had 
already reached the highest pitch, when the news arrived in Brussels 
of the July events, and set the whole land in a flame. On the even- 
ing of the 25th August, after the representation of the opera " The 
Mute of Portici," the mob destroyed the printing-house of a journal 
favourable to the interests of Holland, the palace of the minister of 
justice, the dwelling of the director of police, &c. To restrain any 
farther devastations on the part of the people a burgher guard and 
committee were formed, till the radical and ultramontane parties 
united themselves in a National Congress, under the guidance of 
Potter. The example of the capital was followed, so that in a short 
time the standard of Brabant was waving over the whole of Belgium. 
An attack of the Dutch upon Brussels was repulsed, and the Belgian 
insurgents even marched against Antwerp, to deprive then- detested 
neighbours of this town also. Upon this, the Dutch general, Chasse, 
retired into the strong citadel and fired upon the unfortunate town 
for seven hours, with 300 cannon, by which a vast 
amount of goods of great value was destroyed. Irri- 
tated at this proceeding, the National Congress now declared the 
independence of Belgium, and the exclusion of the house of Orange 
from the Belgian throne. During the continuance of the war between 
Belgium and Holland the five great powers held a conference in 
London. It was here resolved, after long diplomatic negotiations, to 
separate Belgium from Holland, and to arrange the 
boundaries in an equitable manner. In accordance with 
this, Leopold of Sachsen-Coburg, who was related to the royal family 
of England, and who was shortly after united, by a second marriage, 
to a daughter of Louis-Philippe, received the Belgian throne, and 
attempted to conciliate the liberals by granting a free representative 
constitution, and the Catholic clergy by the complete independence 
of the Church of the state. It was in vain that the Hollanders 
attempted again to subject the rebels by force. Threatened and 
opposed by the Prench and English, they were compelled, despite 
December, the bravery of their army and the courage of their sailors, 
1832. to desist from the contest. Belgium, on the other hand, 

flourished under the influence of free institutions and energetic 
industry. 

§ 5G0. The successful termination of the Erench and Belgian 



JULY REVOLUTION OF PARIS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 43 J 

revolutions urged the Poles to an insurrection. Raised to a kingdom 
by the Congress of Vienna, and placed under the government of the 
emperor of Russia, Poland was in a better position than when sub- 
jected to the old anarchy. The constitution, with diets and a 
national armament, afforded the people a regulated freedom ; industry 
increased, literature flourished, passable roads facilitated intercourse ; 
but all these advantages, which, to say the truth, suffered much pre- 
judice from the despotic character of the viceroy, Constantine, were 
not sufficient to prevent the Poles from cherishing the thought of 
again revivifying their divided country ; and the hope that the French 
of the revolution of July would not neglect to hasten to the assistance 
of their old confederates, confirmed them in the belief that the 
moment for the regeneration of the old Poland was again come. It 
was six o'clock on the evening of the 20th November, 
when twenty armed young men of the Cadet school, 
members of a widely-spread military conspiracy, rushed into the 
palace of the viceroy for the purpose of dispatching him, whilst other 
conspirators called the inhabitants of the capital to arms. It was 
only with difficulty that the prince escaped the fate designed for him. 
He yielded to the storm, and retired from the country with his 
Russian soldiers and officials. A provisional government, with Czar- 
toryski, Niemcewicz, general Chlopiki, and others at its head, under- 
took the conduct of affairs in Poland. Instead, however, of employ- 
ing the newly-aroused military spirit and the fresh enthusiasm of the 
people in a spirited attack upon unprepared Russia, the regency, 
which belonged to the aristocracy of Poland, chose the path of nego- 
tiation, and placed their hopes upon the promises of French diploma- 
tists. It made little difference that Chlopiki was shortly after named 
dictator, and entrusted with the supreme command of military affairs ; 
and that the diet, which was hastily called together, invested the 
prince Radzivil with the most unlimited power ; the irresolute aristo- 
cracy, discontented with the violence of the republican and democratic 
clubs, kept things in check, and paralysed every undertaking by hesi- 
tation and dissensions. "Whilst the emperor of Russia ordered an 
army of 200,000 men to march into Poland, under the command of 
January 25, field-marshal Diebitsch, the diet pronounced the dethrone- 
1831. ment of the house of Romanoff in Poland, but rejected, 

from selfish motives, that which could alone save the country, the 
liberation of the peasants and the excitement of a popular war. 
"What mattered it that the Polish army again gave the most splendid 
proofs of courage in the field, that Chlopiki and Skrzynecki fought 
like heroes, and that Dwernicki, who wished to excite Volhynia to 
insurrection, astonished the world by his daring retreat upon the 
Austrian territory ; — when Diebitsch carried off the victory from the 



432 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

army of Skrzynecki, in the battle of Ostrolenka, Poland, 
May 26, 1831. ., v j- • • •- , ', . 

through dissension, party spirit, treachery, and the siren 

voices of French go-betweens, went rapidly to her downfall. Die- 
bitsch died of the cholera. His successor was the enterprising 
Paskewitsch (Eriwanski). He crossed the Prussian Vistula and 
approached the walls of Warsaw. The inhabitants of the capital, 
believing that the miscarriage of the revolution had been occasioned 
by treachery, gave the reins to their fury against the aristocrats and 
friends of the Eussiaus, and slaughtered thirty of these unfortunates. 
Czartoryski, in whose hands the government had been 
placed, fled in horror to the camp of Dembinski. Kruko- 
wiecki was now named president of the government by the diet with 
dictatorial power, and thus the supreme authority was placed in the 
hands of a man who was either a fool or a traitor. When Paske- 
witsch approached the capital, the dictator gave evidence of his 
cowardice and despair by the most contradictory orders and prepos- 
terous arrangements. The Polish army made a gallant resistance to 
the attacks of the enemy at Wola, the ancient place of election of 
the kings, and the heroic deeds of the fourth regiment have since 
September been celebrated in songs ; but after a storm of two days, 
6, 7, 1831. Krukowiecki surrendered Warsaw and Praga by capitula- 
tion, whereupon the government and the diet, with the troops that 
were still left, fled to the Prussian territory. Here the bold warriors 
were disarmed, and detained till the complete subjection of Poland ; 
they then obtained permission to return, under the assurance of an 
amnesty. But thousands among them rejected the grace of the 
emperor, and turned their backs upon their fatherland, preferring to 
eat the bread of affliction upon free, if foreign ground; rather than to 
gaze quietly upon the gradual extinction of the nationality of their 
country. The sympathy of the German people, who received and 
entertained the unfortunates in their melancholy journey, was an 
alleviation of their misery. Severe punishments were inflicted upon 
the guilty in Poland, Lithuania, Volhynia : the mines of Siberia grew 
populous with the condemned. Poland then lost her constitution, 
her diet, and her state council, by the "organic statute," and was 
attached to the great Muscovite empire, with a separate government 
and administration of justice. Since then Paskewitsch reigns as 
imperial lieutenant, with iron sceptre, in humbled Warsaw. The 
Poles had once more shown that they were capable of magnanimous, 
patriotic emotions, and of gallant deeds ; but not of a united effort or 
of noble self-sacrifice. The emigrants, however, in vain attempted in 
the sequel to effect the restoration of their country by conspiracies 
and insurrections in Cracow, Gallicia, and Posen. Fresh perse- 
cutions, and at length, the incorporation of the free state of Cracow 



THE REVOLUTION OF PARIS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 433 

with the Austrian empire (1846), were the consequences of their 
foolhardy attempts. 

§ 561. In Germany also the news of the July revolution called 
forth a mighty movement. The princes, anxious lest the well-known 
hankering of the French for the boundary of the Rhine should be the 
occasion of a new war, saw with uneasiness the existing divisions 
between subjects and governments, and hastened to allay irritation 
and prevent a general movement, partly by reasonable concessions, 
and partly by the hasty recognition of successfully accomplished 
reforms. The insurrections in the kingdoms of Hanover and Saxony 
were appeased by granting liberal constitutions, and by abolishing 
oppressive abuses and restrictions ; in Brunswick, where the people 
destroyed the palace and compelled the tyrannical duke Charles to fly, 
his brother assumed the government, and conciliated the minds of his 
subjects by improving the constitution of the country. In Hesse- 
Cassel, the elector, William II., was compelled by an insurrection to 
give the country a free constitution. But the hatred which the peo- 
ple shortly after displayed against the countess Reichen- 
bach (Lessonitz), his wife, a woman of inferior birth, 
offended the elector to that degree, that he raised his son, the electoral 
prince, to the co-regentship, and removed with his wife and treasures 
from Hessen. The freedom of the press was introduced in Baden, 
the liberals obtained the upper hand in the Chambers of Southern 
Germany, and insisted upon alterations and reforms in the constitu- 
tion and government. But their increasing audacity in speech and 
May 27, writing, which was particularly displayed at the Hamba- 

1832. cher festival in Rhenish Bavaria, soon brought about a 

reaction and restrictions. The peaceful character of the July monar- 
chy and the fall of Warsaw relieved the German governments from 
the apprehension that the liberal movements might be supported from 
abroad ; and the inconsiderate attempts of a few young madcaps, 
students, literary men, and political refugees, to disperse 
the Diet, and to produce a violent revolution by the con- 
spiracy of Frankfurt, aided the cause of the retrogressive party. 
This foolish attempt and its lamentable result gave a deep wound to 
the cause of liberalism, and brought a severe persecution upon its 
chiefs and leaders. The guilty and the suspected were visited by 
numberless arrests and judicial examinations, prisons and fortresses 
were filled with political offenders ; numberless fugitives were wander- 
ing in France and Switzerland. The censorship was again employed 
with the greatest severity, the book trade watched, and the privileges 
of the Estates circumscribed. Thus again were the efforts of the 
progressive party frustrated by the violence and indiscreet zeal of 
some of its champions. The governments obtained the most complete 

rf 



■ I;; |, THE LATEST PERIOD. 

triumph; I ml by I lie use I he v made ofit they outraged the people's sen 8 

of justice and insulted public opinion. This was especially the case, 

when, by the ascension of bhe bhrone of England by queen Viotoria, 

bhe crown of Hanover fell, according bo the prerogative of German 

princes. In her uncle, Ernest Augustus of Cumberland, who abolished 

bhe constitution which bad been united b\ bis predecessors with bhe 

Estates, and restored bhe former arrangements. Unde- 

berred l>\ bhe opposition bhat was displayed against bins 

arbitrary proceeding from every quarter, bhe king ordered 

an oath of obedience and homage bo be bendered bo all servants of 

I be state; and when seven professors of bhe GottingOU university, 

among thorn, Dahlmann, Gervinus, and bhe brothers Grimm, would 

not yield lo I be demand, I bey were deprived of their chairs, and some 

of them banished from bhe country 5 when bhe assembled Estates 
were incompetent bo pass resolutions from a deficiency of numbers, 
bhe absentees were replaced by the election of Ihe minority. By 

these measures a deep mill' was formed between the people and Ihe 

government, and a profound dissatisfaction with the "police stale," 

mid the rule of I he writing ofil.Ce look possession of I he nalion. The 

existing government was attacked l>\ means of bhe press, literature, 
and poetry, and every opposition bo the state officials was saluted bj t be 

nation with joy. One single ellorl was visible in the midst of con- 
tests and divisions, and was bhe "red thread" that ran through bhe 

whole public life of the people bhe striving after national and poli- 
tical unity, and this ellorl Ihe Prussian government came forward bo 
assisi b\ establishing the Zollverein, the foundation-stone of German 
unity. 

§ r>(»'J. In Italy also, Ihe July revolul ion occasioned some serious 
commotions. But the hopes of Ihe patriots found an early grave. 
'The insurrections in Bologna, IModeua, and I'arma, were soon sup- 
pressed by Austrian troops ; and the regents, who had been driven 

from bhe two latter places, restored to bheir governments. In bhe 

Slates of the ( Ihurch, I be papal I roops, w ho were re-in forced by bandits 
and convicts, were employed in keeping down I he rebe I lious provinces. 
These men behaved in such a wa\ Ilia! if was necessary to call in Ihe 
forces of Austria bo protect the land against its own soldiers. To 

prevent ihe A.ustrians getting the whole power over Italy into bheir 

February 23 " un bands, Ihe French seized upon Aucona b\ a COWp de 
1832. main, and held il for several years. An attack upon 

Savoy, from Switzerland, undertaken l>\ a troop of refugees under 

t he command of t he Polish general, Ivamorino, wilh Ihe purpose of 

overthrowing bhe Sardinian bhrone, and, in conjunction with "young 

llal\," of exciting Ihe whole land lo a revolution, hail a lamentable 
resull . 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 4,'Jo 

In Si-AiN, fche liberals, after the .July revolution, again got fche 
upper hand, not by fcheir own strength, however, but in consequence 
of a quarrel for fche crown. Frederick, namely, bad allowed himself 
1,0 be Induced by his fourth wife, Maria Christina, bo abolish fche Salic 
law which prevails in all Bourbon states, and which excludes females 
March 2D, from succeeding fco fche fchrone, and fchus fco secure fche in- 
WSO. heritance of the crown fco his daughter, [sabella, who was 

October, born in fche same year. This alteration displeased fche 
1880. apostolic party, which bad placed all its trust on Ferdi- 

nand's younger brother, Don Carlos. Scarcely therefore, had fche 
September 20, king closed his eyes, before fche absolutists (Carlists) called 
1833. Don Carlos to the fchrone as Charles V., and excited a 

civil war. They found support in fche north, especially among fche 
ni<\<; mountaineers of the Basque provinces, Inflamed by priests and 
October, monks, and Jed by hold and enterprising chiefs (Zumala* 
1833. carreguy, Cabrera), the warlike Basques drew the sword 

for an absolute king who sought for nXut/c among them. For fche 
purpose of resisting them with success, the queen, Maria Christina, 
who had been appointed fco fche regency until fche majority of her 
daughter [sabella, sought to win fche party of the, constitution and fche 
liberals fco her cause by again introducing fche Cortez constitution, 

and permitting fche fugitives and OUtlaWS fcO return to their home::. 

In thi: j , manner fche contest for fche throne took fche shape of a civil 

war and a struggle of opinion:-;. After many hloody battles the 

" Christines" gained' the upper band. Q-eneral Bspartero reduced 
August 31 the Carlist leader, Maroto, fco lay down his arm:-, by fche 
1839. treaty of Pergara, whereupon Don Carlos, with bis family 

and several officers and priests, took refuge in France. Jn Spain 
itself Bspartero fell into a quarrel with fche queen mother, which pro- 
duced a fresh crop of party contests, alteration:! of fche constitution, 
a/id intrigues of the palace. Bspartero, made duke of V if fork, was 
sufficiently powerful fco effect the removal of Christina for 

May, 1841. l' a a j. xi i ■ t i • i i 

some time, and to get the government into run own nanus. 
But he was soon overthrown by general Narvaez, an adherent of 

the queen mother, and compelled to fly to England, After fchis, 

Christina, and her daughter, when she came of age, carried 
on the government in entire accordance with the wishes 
of France. 

9. ovj-.it/j imow 01 TEE TiiuoNK Or' JULY, and 'iiii, LATUM 
BEVOXUG 10VA BT 3 BMPESTS. 
a. THE yi.ailh 02 POLITICAL A2STO SOCIAX A.0ITATIO2T. 
§563. FbAJTCE. — The July monarchy, erected upon the unstable 

foundation of the sovereignty of fche people, was exposed fco many 

attack;-;. Both the adherent;-; of* the Bourbons and of monarchy u \>j 

j f 2 



4j'6 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

the grace of God" (Legitimists, Carlists), and the republicans 
grumbled at the new system, and attempted to overthrow it. It was 
only the prosperous middle class, which, intent upon gain and the 
peaceable enjoyment of its earnings, could find its safety and object 
in a constitutional monarchy, that was content with the government 
of July ; and it was upon this class in especial that Louis Philippe 
leant for support. But, as the king neglected to give the less wealthy 
class of citizens a share of political power by extending the suffrage 
or diminishing the census, the number of his adherents was not 
great. Neither did the king understand how to win the hearts of the 
Trench by greatness of mind and noble actions. In the possession of 
enormous wealth, he made use of his lofty position for the constant 
increase of his property, and thereby incurred the reproach of selfish- 
ness, avarice, and cupidity. This reproach also attached more or less 
to his councillors, ministers, and officials, who were accused of covet- 
ousness and venality ; so that, in the eyes of the people, the stain of 
"corruption" infected the whole July government. The first 
hostilities against the citizen throne and the ministry of the " right 
mean " proceeded from the legitimists. But the hatred of the people 
against the Bourbons was still too recent for their attempts to be 
February 15, successful. The erection of the white banner on the day 

1831. of the death of the due de Berri excited a disturbance, in 
consequence of which the archiepiscopal palace was destroyed. Just 
November, as little success attended the attempt of the duchess of 

1832. Berri to rouse the faithful Vendee to arms. When she 
was arrested, and the secret of a private marriage came to light, the 
romantic magic that had hitherto attached to the royal family gradu- 
ally melted away. The legitimists, with the grey-haired poet, Chateau- 
briand, at then' head, now gave up the hope of raising to the throne 
their favourite, the duke of Bourdeaux (Chambord), whom they had 
bedecked with the ostentatious name of Henry V., and retired 
sullenly into the suburb of St. Germaine. 

The undertakings of the republicans were more perilous to the 
a.d. 1831. throne of July. After the public insurrections in Lyons 
a.d. 1832. and Paris had been suppressed by the military power, and 
a.d. 1834. their originators and participators punished, they re- 
frained from any further attempts by open violence, but made 
constant efforts to increase the number of their adherents by diffusing 
their opinions in journals, and by means of secret societies. The 
"National," conducted by Armand Carrel, and, after his death in a 
duel, by Marrast, was the much-persecuted and much-punished organ 
of their party. But the republicans soon separated themselves in 
different directions. Whilst the moderate (honest) republicans ouly 
sought to attack the existing government, and aimed at revolutioniz- 
ing the a flairs of state, others (like Proudhon) declared property to be 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 437 

robbery, and threatened war to all who were in possession of anything ; 
or (like Louis Blanc) they flattered the self-love and self-respect of 
the working-classes by an over-estimation of their functions and 
importance, preached up the equality of capital and labour, and 
demanded better payment and greater security to the latter from the 
state. These men sought to revolutionize social relations, and to 
reduce to practice the systems of socialism and communism, devised 
by a few visionaries and men of perverted intellects. "Without any 
conception of the vast machinery of human intercourse, they applied 
to society the petty measure of the workshop and the club. Liberty, 
equality, fraternity, were their watchwords ; and hatred to the 
bourgeoisie the essence of their doctrine. These communistic and 
social ideas spread and increased; shrouded in the veil of the for- 
bidden and the mysterious, they seemed to narrow minds and stunted 
natures the depth of wisdom, the anchor of salvation from poverty 
and wretchedness. Influenced by the notion that the French govern- 
ment was only held together by the skill and dexterity of its chief, 
the members of the secret union sought the life of the king, that they 
might proclaim a republic in the moment of confusion, and then 
proceed at once with their social reforms. Eight attempts at assassi- 
nation were made upon Louis Philippe, from the whole of which he 
escaped with wonderful good fortune. The most dreadful of these 
was that executed iu the Boulevards on the celebration 
July 28. of ^ Jul y da ^ 18g ^ ^ the Corsican, Pieschi, by means 

of the so-called infernal machine, by which twenty-one people who 
were near the king, and, among others, the grey-haired marshal 
Mortier, lost their lives. Pieschi and his two confederates died by 
the guillotine ; but their death did not deter others from similar 
attempts. Eestrictions of the press, of the privilege of forming 
unions, and of personal liberty, were the result of each of these 
designs. It was a hard fate for Louis Philippe that his eldest son, 
July 13 tne De l° ve< 3- duke of Orleans, met with his death by a fall 

1842. from his carriage. 

§ 564. In the second half of the fifth decennium all the States of 
Europe were powerfully excited by events of varied character. In 
Italy, pope Pius IX. took the lead of all other princes by his timely 
reforms, and again made the papacy the political centre of the 
country. He gave greater freedom to the press, improved the affairs 
of government and the administration of justice, gave the city of 
Rome a liberal municipal government, and took preparatory measures 
for a confederation of the Italian States. A mighty enthusiasm 
seized upon the excitable Italians, and fresh hopes sprung up in. the 
bosoms of the patriots. Sicily raised the standard of independence, 
January, an ^ commenced a fierce war against its oppressor ; the 
1848. ' king of Naples sought to appease the threatened insur- 



438 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

rection of his subjects by giving them a constitution, and thus obliged 
the other princes to take a similar step. Archduke Leopold of 
Tuscany and Charles Albert of Sardinia followed his example. The 
duke of Modena, a zealous defender of the divine right of princes, 
withdrew himself from the hatred of his people by flight ; and in 
December 18 Parma the throne became vacant by the death of the 
1847. duchess Maria Louisa, the little-loved and little-respected 

widow of Napoleon. These events filled the Italians with the hope of 
national unity and civil freedom. Only two powers, a spiritual and a 
secular, seemed to stand in the way of this object — the Jesuits and 
the Austrians. The fiery hate of the Italians was consequently 
directed against both. Vivas for Gioberti, the enemy of the Jesuits, 
and "Death to the Germans," against Austria, were mingled with the 
shouts for Pio JSTono. 

In Geemant the opposition between the people and the govern- 
ments had risen to the uttermost. The polite literature of " young 
Germany ;" the stirring poetry of a Herwegh, Hoffman von Faller- 
sleben, and other singers of political freedom ; the daring daily press ; 
the freethinking and anti- Church writings of young philosophers and 
theologians; the discourses and doctrines of the "friends of Hght" 
in the Protestant Church, and of the " German Catholics in the 
Catholic — all these spiritual strivings betrayed the profound discon- 
tent of a large portion of the German people with the existing con- 
ditions of State and Church, and their aversion to the system retained 
and defended by the governments. Frederick William IV., who since 
1840 had borne the crown of Prussia, a prince of high accomplish- 
ments and active mind, deemed himself obliged to make some conces- 
sions to the spirit of the age. He threw open the courts of justice, 
and permitted oral pleadings ; he diminished ecclesiastical restraints 
by an edict of toleration ; and by the patent of the 3rd 
of February he summoned the " United Estates " to a 
Diet in Berlin. It was here that, despite all the restrictions con- 
tained in the patent, so violent an opposition was displayed, former 
promises were so emphatically referred to, the righteous claims of a 
civilized nation to liberty of the press and the other privileges of a 
free state, were so eloquently urged, that the old system of govern- 
ment appeared no longer tenable. The nation followed with pride 
the proceedings of an assembly which displayed such splendid powers 
of oratory and such a fulness of intelligence and judgment. Whilst 
the educated and wealthy were following with intense interest these 
inward struggles in the region of Church and State, and looking with 
anxiety on the disturbances in the trading world, where a succession 
of bankruptcies had deprived thousands of their property, the cry of 
la i nine sounded in the huts of the starving, who, in the increasing 
dearness of provisions, were unable to supply their necessities. The 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 439 

intelligence of the fearful distress which in Upper Silesia had engen- 
dered pestilence, and in many trading and manufacturing places had 
produced scenes of Irish misery, together with the exciting literature 
in the hands of the lower classes, and the suffering that was every 
where prevalent, produced a vast irritation, which at length burst 
forth in insurrections in Stuttgardt, Munich, and other towns. It is 
true that these were suppressed by the military and the police, and 
the benevolence of the wealthy and an abundant harvest soon put an 
end to the temporary distress ; but the increasing poverty, and the 
great inequality in propert}' - and in the enjoyments of life were now 
for the first time revealed in their full extent. Men gazed into the 
abyss of misery and wretchedness in which the lower classes were 
found. The irritation and discontent thus excited against the political 
arrangements, to which the whole of the mischief was ascribed, was 
increased to the highest pitch by the intelligence that the old king 
Louis of Bavaria had been entangled in the snares of a Spanish 
dancer, Lola Montes, and had allowed himself to be led by her into 
acts of folly and enormous extravagance. The ultramontane party, 
which had ruled the king and the country for years, quarrelled with 
this courtesan, who had been created countess of Landsfeldt, and 
suddenly found itself threatened with loss of power. The ministry of 
Abel and the heads of the ultramontane party in the universities 
were dismissed. This occasioned a commotion among the Bavarian 
people ; and when the king, indignant that the students attached 
themselves to the ultramontane party, and did not show the respect 
he required to the insolent dancer, ordered the university of Munich 
to be closed, and commanded the students to leave the place, an 
insurrection broke out, by which Louis found himself obliged to recal 
the suspension, and to get rid of the countess. 

About this time there prevailed a great enmity in Switzerland be- 
tween the Catholics and Protestants, and the conservatives and radicals. 
In the Aargau the radical government had abolished the eight monas- 
teries of the country as " meeting-places of rebellion," and confiscated 
their property. The protests of the seven Catholic cantons (Schwytz, 
Uri, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Freiburg, Valais) produced no 
effect at the Diet. The division was increased when the ultramontane 
government of Lucerne, with the aid of the people of the canton, 
called in the Jesuits to superintend the education of the youth, and 
repulsed the radicals, who wished to produce a revolution by means 
of a volunteer expedition. The contest now resolved 
itself into a desperate struggle between Jesuitism and 
radicalism. The seven Catholic cantons demanded punishment of the 
volunteers, and legal protection against similar undertakings, and the 
restoration of the monasteries of the Aargau; and when their 



440 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

demands were not acceded to, formed a " special confederation " for 
mutual defence against attacks from within and without. The 
radicals, who by means of the " Putsche " had a majority in the Diet 
at Vaud, Geneva, and other places, procured a resolution which 
dissolved the special confederation as incompatible with the govern- 
ment of the union, and banished the Jesuits. As the 
' ' members of the special confederation refused submission 
to the decisions of the Diet, the sword became the arbiter. Contrary 
to expectation, the struggle was soon over. A confederate army, 
under Dufour, subdued Freiburg and Lucerne with little 
resistance, whereupon the other cantons freely submitted. 
December 1. They were obliged to renounce the Sonderbund, to banish 
the Jesuits, to alter the cantonal government, and to pay the 
expenses of the war. When too late, the three great powers, Austria, 
France, and Prussia, offered their mediation. The French found the 
Sonderbund already dissolved ; and the discovery that the minister, 
Guizot, took the part of the Jesuits, increased the dissatisfaction in 
France with the July government. The Swiss took advantage of 
circumstances to remodel their constitution, and to create a stronger 
federative government. 

I. THE PAEIS REVOLUTION OE EEBRTJARY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

§ 565. About the time that the events in Italy and Switzerland 
were exciting a strong feeling in France, and the policy of Gruizot 
was giving great offence to the liberals, an action for bribery against 
general Cubieres and the minister, Teste, and the dreadful murder of 
the duchess of Praslin in her bed-chamber by her own husband, revealed 
the total want of morality in the upper classes that were grouped 
around the throne of July. The feeling that a system of govern- 
ment founded upon such rotten supports coidd not endure, became 
more and more prevalent among the nation ; and the call for elective 
reform, by which it hoped to infuse fresh vigour into the Estates and 
the government, became the watchword of the day. Reform, banquets 
were arranged in all corners of the land, in which the sins of the 
existing government were mercilessly exposed in daring speeches and 
toasts. But the government not only prohibited this reform festival, 
but censure was cast in the speech from the throne on a movement 
that was excited by blind or hostile passions. Despite the prohibi- 
tion, the chiefs of the opposition in the Chambers, and some of the 
leaders of the liberals and moderate republicans, proceeded with 
their preparations for a reform banquet, and publishe/l a programme 
of the procession and the arrangement of the dinner ; when, however, 
the government adopted military measures to ensure respect to its 
orders, the greater number of the arrangers of the festival desisted 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 44J 

from their purpose, and the members of the Left (opposition) resolved 
to bring forward a motion in the next session for impeaching the 
ministry for injuring the constitution. 

But the people were already too much excited to be pacified by 
such a measure as this. Crowds of artisans, men in blouses, stu- 
dents, and the refuse of the streets, paraded through the squares and 
thoroughfares of the capital with the cry of " Reform !" and " Down 
with Gruizot!" Their numbers increased from hour to hour; the 
military acted with forbearance, the police was no match for the 
multitude ; in some streets barricades were erected and maintained. 
The contest had continued for two days with increasing bitterness 
February 22, when the king dismissed the ministry of Gruizot and 
23 - promised reform. This news occasioned unspeakable 

pleasure among the excited popidace. The crowds marched through 
the streets with songs and shouts of joy, the barricades disappeared, 
and the houses were illuminated. At this point it happened that a 
troop of people marched through the Botdevards about ten o'clock 
with banners and torches. They halted before the foreign ministry, 
and demanded the illumination of the house. At this moment a 
shot was heard, and occasioned a belief among the military posted in 
the building that they were attacked. A volley was suddenly fired 
upon the crowd, fifty-two of whom fell to the ground either killed or 
wounded. An indescribable fury took possession of the people. A 
bier was covered with dead bodies and paraded through the streets of 
the city with torches in the midst of the cries, " To arms !" " We are 
slaughtered !" The alarum-bell was sounded at midnight, and by the 
morning of the 24th of February the whole of Paris was closed up 
with barricades. Victory, after a violent contest, inclined to the 
side of the people. Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his grand- 
son, the count of Paris, and fled with his wife to England, where the 
other members of his family also arrived by different ways and after 
many perfls. Hereupon, a republican government was established in 
Paris, under the presidentship of the old Dupont de l'Eure, and in 
which the poet Lamartine, Ledru-Bollin the leader of the Left, 
Arago, Gamier- Pages, and the socialist Louis Blanc had a share. 

But the new form of government did not bring the anticipated 
happiness. The intoxication of the republican festival, with its 
joyous feasts and consecration of banners, and the enthusiasm for the 
watchwords, "liberty, equality, fraternity," passed away, and the 
sober practical life brought with it many difficulties. As the Revo- 
lution was the work of the labouring-classes, it was necessary to give 
some thoughts to their elevation and improvement. National work- 
shops were raised, where the unemployed were to find occupation 
and support. It was now that the utter instability of socialism 
became apparent. The expenses of the state rose incredibly, and 



442 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

the number of paupers increased daily. It was soon clear to every 
one that such a system must in a short time lead to the ruin of the 
state, the impoverishment of those who possessed any thing, and the 
destruction of civilization. Accordingly, when a constituent National 
Assembly, elected by the voices of the whole people, met together in 
May, one of its first measures was to close these shops and to with- 
draw the assistance of the state from the workmen. Upon this the 
workmen attempted a new revolution, for the purpose of giving the 
supreme power to the fourth estate. This led to the dreadful scenes 
of June, when the supporters of the "red republic" disgraced them- 
selves by deeds of savage brutality. They murdered general Brea 
and the archbishop of Paris, and filled the barricades with the dead 
bodies of their opponents. Horrified at this barbarity, the National 
Assembly invested general Cavaignac with dictatorial power. Ca- 
vaignac defeated the rebels, had crowds of them arrested and de- 
ported, and put Paris under military law. Protected by these 
measures, the Assembly then completed the republican government 
with a single Chamber, and a president, who was to be elected every 
four years. It would willingly have given the majority of votes, also, 
to general Cavaignac at the election of president ; but the people, 
dazzled by the lustre of the imperial name, chose Louis Buonaparte, 
the same nephew of Napoleon who had before twice attempted to 
overthrow the government of Louis Philippe by insurrections, and 
who had paid the penahy of his folly by long imprisonments. 

§ 566. The news of the Paris revolution of February occasioned a 
violent shock all over Europe. Popular commotions took place in 
Germany, Hungary, Italy, and other places, which in extent and 
violence far surpassed all previous disturbances. A propaganda, 
which had its seat and centre in Paris, stirred the revolutionary fire, 
and diffused republican ideas, with a tincture of communism and 
socialism, as the means of exciting the lower classes. The first 
effects displayed themselves in Baden. The active political life which 
has always distinguished the Grand Duchy, appeared to give it the 
right of marching foremost with the banner of progress and reform. 
Urgent petitions, tumultuously presented to the Estates of the country 
just then assembled, demanded freedom of the press, juries, a militia 
under freely elected leaders, and a German parliament, as a popular 
house, by the side of the Diet. The Baden government not only 
granted these demands so far as laid in its power, but it even adopted 
other conciliatory measures. The example of Baden acted upon the 
other states of Germany. The same demands were gradually made 
every where, and yielded to, and others joined with them. In Wir- 
temberg, Saxony, and other states, the heads of the liberal opposition 
were summoned to the ministry and the reins of government placed 
in their hands. But the Austrian empire suffered the greatest con- 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 443 

M his vidsions. An insurrection in Vienna, occasioned by 
some students and young rioters, and supported by the 
rabble, bad sucb unexpected success tbat prince Metternicb laid 
down bis exalted office, and sougbt refuge as a grey-beaded fugi- 
tive in England. Upon tbis tbe old system was dissolved, and a 
state of lawlessness took possession of the capital. Tbe freedom 
of tbe press soon produced a revolutionary daily literature ; tbe right 
of assembly was made use of for forming tumultuous mobs and demo- 
cratic clubs ; tbe great number of unemployed workmen facilitated 
the schemes of the revolutionary party. Thus it happened that by 
the activity of the democrats, who streamed together into Vienna 
from all quarters, insurrections and street fights were crowded upon 
each other. The emperor retired, with his court, to 
Innsbruck ; and only returned to his capital when the 
Diet, which had in the mean time been chosen by universal suffrage, 
T , assembled, and required him by pressing messages to 

resume his seat in Vienna. 
Berlin had its March days as well as the imperial city. After 
long hesitation, the Prussian government at length consented to 

,, ' „ freedom of tbe press and other reforms, and held out a 
March 17- _ r ' _. 

prospect of a revolution m the relations of the German 

confederation. But as hostile encounters had for several days past 
taken place between the nrilitary and the people, these concessions 
did not restore tranquillity ; the removal of the troops and the forma- 
tion of a militia was demanded. Poles and other foreign agitators 
increased the hatred and excitement by inflammatory discourses. 

,»■ , ,„ The assemblies in front of the palace increased, and the 
March 18. . jn l ' 

threats against the soldiery became constantly louder. 

A division of infantry now marched out of the palace to drive back 

the increasing masses. Two shots were fired, by whom or from 

which party is uncertain. They gave the signal for a desperate 

street-battle of fourteen hours. On the morning of the 19th of March 

the contest was yet undecided, although most of the barricades bad 

been taken or destroyed by tbe courage of the soldiers and the effects 

of the grape-shot. The king at length gave command for the retreat of 

the military, dismissed the ministry, and consented to the formation 

of a militia for the defence of the city and the guard of the palace. 

An unconditional amnesty, which was shortly after announced, and 

which was imitated in the other states of Germany, freed from 

punishment all those condemned for political crimes or offences, 

and permitted the return of fugitives ; and three days 

later, the king promised in a proclamation and during a 

solemn procession through the city, that he would place himself as 

constitutional king at the head of a free and united Germany. A 

constituent National Assembly, elected by universal suffrage, under- 



444- THE LATEST PERIOD. 

took, a few weeks later, the great work of framing a representative 
constitution for the Prussian monarchy. 

§ 567. In the mean time a mighty revolution had taken place in 
all the German states. The Diet had experienced an increase of 
liberal members, and seventeen trustworthy men were commissioned 

„ , „ to design a new constitution. In Bavaria king Louis 
March 20. 

gave way before public opinion, and resigned the govern- 
ment to the crown prince, Maximilian ; a similar change took place 
in Hessen-Darmstadt. In Hanover, Kur-Hessen, and the greater 
number of states, the often-persecuted leaders of the liberals were 
now called to the ministry, and reforms were introduced in a demo- 
cratic spirit and with destructive haste. But the movement soon 
became so powerful that reforms were no longer sufficient, and here 
and there the path of revolution was entered upon. In some neigh- 
bourhoods the peasants drove away the stewards, destroyed the land 
and tithe registers and the seats of the landlords. It was not suffi- 
cient for the men of outward progress that the parliament of 
Frankfurt-on-the-Main, which assembled by its own authority in the 
beginning of April, laid down the principle of the sovereignty of the 
people, and embraced the resolution that a freely elected National 
Assembly should prepare a new constitution for collective Germany, 
and that a perpetual committee of fifty should watch over the strict 
execution of this resolution on the part of the government — a radical 
party, with Hecker, Struve, and others at its head, called the people to 
arms in the upper part of Baden, for the purpose of establishing a 
German republic. The republican arms, however, made little pro- 
gress. After a few expeditions, in which the union general, Frederick 
von Gagern, lost his life, the insurrection was quelled and the 
leaders obliged to fly. 

On the 18th of May the sittings of the National Assembly, which 
was to frame a constitution, were opened. The assembly in the 
church of St. Paul in Frankfurt, distinguished by its talent and 
eloquence, was a worthy expression of German opinion and civilization. 
One of the first acts of the Frankfurt parliament was to set aside the 
Diet and establish a new central power. After some sharp parlia- 
mentary contests, in which the "bold grasp" of the president, Henry 
von Gagern, determined the result, it was finally arranged that the 
National Assembly should choose an irresponsible regent, who was then 
to surround himself with a responsible ministry. The election, which 
took place on the 29th of June, was decided in favour of archduke 
John of Austria, who, after his entrance into Frankfurt, 
received from the hands of the president of the Diet the 
power exercised by that body. 

§ 508. Not less violent were the convulsions and mutations pro- 
duced in Italy by the revolution of February. In Sicily the war 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 445 

against Naples was continued for upwards of a year with great vigour 
and perseverance, without, however, the unfortunate island being 
able to attain its asserted independence. The king of Naples, strong 
in his mercenary Swiss troops, reduced the Sicilians to submission, 
and then destroyed by violence the constitutional government in 
Naples, which he had granted in a moment of necessity. 

In Rome the movement soon became too powerful for the weak 
pope, Pius IX., to control. It was in vain that he promised a 
constitutional government to the Ecclesiastical State, and summoned 
an assembly of the Estates to the capital. His minister, Rossi, was 
November 15, killed by the thrust of a dagger in the throat on the steps 

1848. of the House of Assembly, after which the democrats 
took the whole power into their own hands. The pope, filled with 
terror, fled in disguise to Graeta, and relinquished the eternal city to 
February, the populace and the volunteers, who now established the 

1849. Roman republic and seized upon the property of the 
Church. Mazzini, the energetic chief of Young Italy, and Garibaldi, 
the daring leader of the volunteers, ruled in Rome. The pope now 
addressed himself to the protecting powers of the Church, and suc- 
ceeded so far that a Erench army under the command of general 
Oudinot marched to the walls of Rome and demanded the restoration 
of the former system. "When this was refused, the Erench proceeded 
to lay siege to the city, but encountered so fierce a resistance, that 
it was only after weeks of sanguinary attacks and encounters that 
T s 1 840 ^ e y got possession of the place. The republicans sought 

for safety in flight ; and the old state of things gradually 
came back under the protection of bayonets. 

In Tuscany, also, the democrats gained the upper hand for a short 
time, and compelled the Grand Duke to take flight ; but the republican 
government lasted but a few weeks. 

The most remarkable revolution in affairs took place in Upper 
M h 1848 I TALT - I n Milan and Venice the Austrian garrisons 
were driven out by popular insurrections and street-fights, 
whereupon the standard of independence was raised throughout the 
whole of Lombardy. This filled the king Charles Albert of Sardinia 
with the hope of making himself master of the Lombard- Venetian 
kingdom. He declared war against Austria ; and being supported in 
the first moments of enthusiasm and surprise by numerous Italian 
volunteers, he drove back the enemy to the northern frontier of 
Italy. But the state of affairs soon changed. On the 25th of July 
field-marshal Radetzky, who was eighty-six years of age, gained a 
victory at Custozza, which was followed by the reconquest of Milan 
and the whole of Lombardy. The king of Sardinia fled during the 
night to his own dominions, and concluded a truce with the victors. 
Urged on by the democrats, Charles Albert again tried the fortune 



413 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

March 20 — °f arms in the following spring. But the old Radetzky's 
24, 1849. campaign of four days on the Tessino and near Novara 
brought the enterprise to a rapid termination, and rendered abortive 
the hopes of the Italian patriots. Charles Albert, despairing of suc- 
cess, abdicated his throne in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, and 
fled by secret paths from the land of his fathers till he found a refuge 
in Portugal, where he shortly after died. The young king then con- 
cluded a disadvantageous peace with Austria. 

Venice, rendered impregnable by its position, withstood for some 
months longer the besieging army of Austrians, till dissensions within 
. and sufferings without gave back the renowned city of 

lagunes to its ancient possessors. Things now every where 
returned to their former state, but the honour of Italy had been 
redeemed by the struggle. 

§ 569. In the mean time Germany and Hungary experienced still 
more violent revolutionary storms and convulsions. Whilst the con- 
stituent National Assembly was consulting in Frankfurt over the 
new confederate constitution, a sanguinary national war was going on 
in Schleswic-Holstein against Denmark. Supported by a good old 
right, according to which the duchies Schleswic-Holstein were to 
remain united and to descend as a heritage to the male line of the 
princely house of Oldenburg only, the sturdy inhabitants of these 
duchies wished, upon the approaching extinction of the royal family of 
Denmark, to be united to their German relations under the legitimate 
and native duke of Augustenburg. This hope the king of Denmark, 
T l r ijuk incited by the strong Danish party, had destroyed by 
the "public letter" in which he announced the indis- 
soluble connexion of Schleswic with Denmark and the undisturbed 
integrity of the Danish monarchy. When, in consequence of the 
February revolution, a mighty movement was communicated to all 
nations, the duchies also thought that they must gain their rights by 
their own strength. Trusting to the assistance of Germany, which 
had been promised to them in many addresses, they erected a provi- 
sional government till their legitimate position shoidd be secured. 
The central government of Frankfurt recognized their right, and 
appointed a Heutenancy. This was the signal for war. The German 
people interested themselves for the land attacked by the Danes. 
Volunteers, among whom were many students and promising youths, 
perilled life and health in the unequal contest ; the German con- 
federate troops, under the command of Prussia, cleared Schleswic of 
the Danes. But the strife, was rendered unequal by the want of a 
German fleet, and the maritime trade of the north suffered much loss 
and disturbance. This circumstance, and the threatening attitude of 
Russia and England, operated in favour of the Danes ; so that the 
Prussian government, which had committed the management of the 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 447 

Schleswic-Holstein question to the central authority of Germany, 
entered into diplomatic negotiations, and concluded the not very 
August 26, creditable truce of Malmo. When this truce, after long 
1848. and violent opposition, was sanctioned by the National 

Assembly at Frankfurt, the German republican party, which had 
long been dissatisfied with the prudent moderation of the parliament, 
made this decision a pretext for attempting to disperse the assembly 
in the church of St. Paul by means of an insurrection and street- 
fight, and then to bring about a revolution and a republic. The 
project was frustrated by calling in the confederate troops ; 
' but the frightful murder of two members of the parlia- 
ment, Auerswald and Lichnowsky, in the Bornheimer wood by the 
mob, afforded a fearful proof of the height to which rudeness and 
barbarism had already risen among the irritated populace. 

§ 570. This barbarism shortly afterwards displayed itself in the 
Austrian empire by two deeds not less horrible. The Httngabians, 
who had for some time past been excited against Austria by Magyar 
agitators, strove to obtain national independence. The kingdom of 
Hungary was to have its own government and a separate political 
existence totally independent of the imperial government in Vienna, 
and to share neither in the military system, the national debt or the 
finance, tax, or trade legislation of the rest of the empire. These 
efforts of the Magyars, by which the kingdom of Hungary was to 
have retained merely a "personal union" with the Austrian empire, 
were now developed with greater energy, but encountered a vehement 
resistance, not in Vienna alone, but among the Slavish races, Croats, 
Slavonians, Servians, &c, which were united with the Magyars in 
the Hungarian kingdom. Jellachich, Ban of Croatia, took the field 
against the Magyars ; his undertaking met with secret encourage- 
ment from the court and ministry. This excited the rage of the 
Magyars to such a height that the furious mob put the imperial corn- 
October 3, missioner, Lamberg, to a frightful death upon the bridge 
1848. of Buda-Pesth. This deed called forth an imperial war 

manifesto, in consequence of which a portion of the Austrian army 
received orders to march upon Hungary. But the Viennese demo- 
crats, who saw their own cause in the insurrection in Hungary, pre- 
vented the march, and excited a rebellion in the capital that surpassed 
in violence and importance all that had preceded it. A crowd of people, 
furious with Latour, the minister of war, who had had communications 
with Jellachich, forced their way into the war office and killed the un- 
fortunate man with blows of hammers and thrusts of pikes. 
This was the commencement of the Vienna October days, 
the most violent catastrophe of this deeply -moved time. Horrified at 
the fierce proceedings of the aroused masses, the king again left the 
capital and retired to Olmiitz in Moravia. Prom thence he issued 



448 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

his commands to prince AVindischgratz, who a few months 
before had displayed his vigour and resolution by the 
energetic suppression of a Slavish insurrection in Prague, to reduce 
the insurgent capital to submission. Thus commenced the memorable 
siege and storm of Vienna. For three weeks, the democrats, who were 
supported by a licentious press, by clubs, and public speeches, defended 
themselves against the besieging troops. Yolunteers and democratic 
leaders, united together from all parts in the capital, kept alive the 
spirit of contest. At length the military superiority of the army carried 
off the victory. The town was taken by storm and put under martial 
law ; and the leaders and promoters of the revolutionary movement 
severely punished. Many found their death from what in military 
law is called "powder and lead." Among these was Robert Blum, a 
member of the Frankfurt National Assembly, and chief speaker of 
the " Left." He had taken a share in the struggle ; his character as 
representative of the people coidd not save him from the iron severity 
of the general ; the German democrats regarded him as the martyr of 
liberty, and celebrated a general funeral solemnity. The Austrian 
legislative National Assembly was removed from Vienna to Kremsier 
in Moravia. 

§ 571. These proceedings and the violent contest that now sprung 
up in Hungary, when "Windischgratz, with the proud consciousness of 
a victor, led the Austrian army against Pesth, confirmed the majority 
of the Frankfurt parliament in the persuasion that it would be advan- 
tageous as well for the Germans as the Austrian confederacy if each 
were separately to erect its new system of government upon a liberal 
basis, and then to conclude farther federative relations with a trade and 
customs legislation common to both. Prussia was to be at the head of 
the German union. This project found its most decided supporter in 
the president, Henry von Gagern, who, for the purpose of carrying out 
the scheme more effectually, assumed in December the presidentship 
of the imperial ministry. The plan however encountered the greatest 
opposition from the Austrian delegates, who discovered in it the ex- 
clusion of Austria from Germany ; from the Catholics, who feared the 
preponderance of Protestant Prussia ; and from the republicans, who 
saw, in a powerful hereditary monarchy, an insuperable obstacle to 
the realization of their principles, and who were irritated with the 
Prussian government on account of the dissolution of the constituent 
i 1 1 1 1 icrial assembly in Berlin. The king of Prussia, namely, had long been 
a Avitness of the senseless proceedings of the democrats ; he had repeat- 
edly changed his ministry in accordance with their wishes, he had 
offered no impediment to the debates of the Diet where the democratic 
part}- was in a majority, he had surrendered the capital to the defence 
of the militia. But when the presumption of the populace who were 
kept in a constant state of fermentation by foreign and native agi- 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 449 

tators, by placards on the walls, and by public orators, exceeded all 
bounds ; when the popular unions ruled the city, when crowds of 
" Bummlern" surrounded the National Assembly and exercised an 
influence upon the course of the debates by intimidation, the king at 
length resolved to put an end to these proceedings. The new Bran- 
denburg- Manteuffel ministry adjourned the National Assembly, and 
removed the next sitting to the town of Brandenburg ; and when a 
considerable number of the members refused obedience to the com- 
mand, and continued their meetings in Berlin, despite the state of 
war with which the city was threatened, and, at length, when driven 
November ou ^ ^J ^ e m ilitary, declared the levying of taxes to be 
and Decern- contrary to law, the dissolution took place. At the same 
er, 1848. time, the government itself proclaimed a constitution upon 
an extremely liberal basis, which was to be submitted to a new elec- 
tive assembly with two chambers, for its examination and approval. 

§ 572. It was not long before a similar measure followed in Aus- 
tria. For the purpose of getting a free field, the emperor Ferdinand, 
who, at the time of the disturbances, had made many promises, had 
been induced to resign the government as early as December, where- 
upon his youthful nephew, Francis Joseph, obtained the imperial 
throne. He dissolved the constituent Diet of Kremsier, in March, 1849, 
and then proclaimed an " octroyed" constitution, and a law respecting 
seignorial rights and the indemnification for socage dues. Hungary 
was at the same time to be restrained by fresh exertions of power. 
But the Austrians encountered a noble resistance from this warlike 
and hardy equestrian and nomadic people, the Magyars. Excited by 
the fiery eloquence of Kossuth, and supported by Polish leaders, like 
Dembinski and Bern, the Hungarians compelled the hostile forces to 
retreat, captured Buda, and got possession of all the fortresses. 
Grorgey, a brave and talented general, was at the head of the forces. 
The army of the insurgents was strengthened by the native militia 
(Honveds), and by foreign volunteers ; Hungarian bank-notes, pre- 
pared by Kossuth, were paid and accepted as money. Full of proud 
April 14, confidence the Diet of Debreczin declared Hungary's in- 
1849. dependence of Austria, and established a provisional go- 

vernment under the direction of Kossuth. It was now discovered in 
Austria that Windischgratz had undertaken a task to which he was 
not equal ; he was recalled, and field-marshal Haynau appointed in 
his place. As the Austrian court was convinced that he could not, 
with his own forces, suppress the Hungarian insurgents, who were 
now approaching to the frontiers of Austria, it called upon Russia for 
assistance. The hostile armies now marched into Hungary from three 
quarters : on the north, Paskewitsch with his Russians ; on the west, 
Haynau with his Austrian troops ; and on the south, Jellachich with 

Gg 



450 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

his Croats. The Hungarian army nevertheless resisted for many 
months, and Gorgey, Klapka, and other brave generals yet gained 
many a splendid victory. But internal dissensions among the 
Polish and Magyar leaders, and a division that had arisen between 
Kossuth and Gorgey, paralyzed the strength of the insurgents. 
Pressed upon on all sides, Gorgey, who had been named dictator, 
August 11, hiid down his arms to the Eussians at Vilagos, and thus 
1849. brought about tbe subjection of the country. Kossuth 

and many of the insurgent leaders found refuge in Turkey ; but who 
can tell bow great was the number of those who died by the sentence 
of courts-martial, or pined away in dungeons, or who served in the 
baggage and conveyance department of the Austrian army ? Gorgey 
has since lived in Carinthia, but the public voice of his nation accuses 
him of treachery to the cause of his country. 

§ 573. Hungary's fall by the catastrophe of Vilagos was the close 
of the revolutionary movement that had spread over Europe after the 
Parisian revolution of February. It had reached its termination some 
time previously in Germany. 

In the- midst of many contests, the Frankfurt National Assembly 
had at length accomplished the solution of its task. It had esta- 
blished and made known the "fundamental rights of the German peo- 
ple," and had at last accomplished the formation of an imperial con- 
stitution. The Gagern party, which was striving for a German con- 
federacy, with an hereditary emperor and a legislative assembly, divided 
into a government and popular house, had at last carried their pro- 
posal by a small majority, after they had won the support of many 
members of the Left by accepting a democratic elective law with 
universal right of suffrage. The new imperial constitution was 
brought to a conclusion by this " compromise," and the 
transference of the hereditary dignity of the emperor to 
the king of Prussia was also carried. A solemn deputation, headed 
by the worthy president Simson, now conveyed the resolution of the 
Assembly to the king of Prussia, and made him an offer of the im- 
perial crown, upon condition of his accepting the constitution in all 
its details. It was a great historical moment when, on the 3rd of 
April, king Frederick William IV. met the deputation in the great 
hall of his palace in Berlin : the results of this event were looked for 
with the utmost eagerness by the German nation. But the king first 
gave an ambiguous answer, and at length decisively rejected the dignity 
offered him by the people. The deputies of parliament had gone 
forth, as it were, in triumph ; they returned to Frankfurt very like 
scattered fugitives. "When the Prussian Assembly of Estates, which, 
in the mean time, had been again summoned, voted an address to the 
throne, in which the acceptance of the imperial office and constitution 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 45 \ 

was recommended as the wish of the nation, the second chamber was 

dissolved and the first adiourned, and then followed an 
ADril ^*7 

alteration of the elective law, so that, in future, an elec- 
tion arranged upon the three tax-paying classes was to take place of 
the universal right of suffrage. 

§ 574. This rejection of the imperial constitution brought fresh 
revolutionary storms upon Germany. The democrats, who had 
hitherto been satisfied neither with the Frankfurt parliament, with 
the imperial constitution, nor with the " historical sentimentality " of 
an hereditary emperor, now took advantage of the rejection for again 
assuming arms. Violent insurrections and sanguinary street-fights 
took place for the purpose of " carrying through the imperial consti- 
tution ;" and even first of all in those states which had opposed its 
introduction — in Saxony, in the Bavarian Palatinate, and in some 
parts of Rhenish Prussia. Other states also were soon hurried away 
by the movement ; and when a mutiny broke out among the soldiers 
in the fortress of Bastatt, in the grand duchy of Baden, where the 
government had acknowledged the imperial constitution, which 
extended itself to Carlsruhe, and in consequence of which the grand 
duke was compelled to take flight, and the government fell into the 
hands of the democratic and republican party, the revolution had gained 
a broad foundation. In the Frankfurt National Assembly, also, the 
Left was constantly gaining power by the opposition of the' govern- 
ments to the work of the constitution ; especially when many of the 
conservative and constitutional party voluntardy resigned their seats, 
and others yielded obedience to the calls of their governments. In 
this melancholy position, Germany was saved from ruin by the 
bravery of the Prussian army. Prussian troops first repressed the 
isolated outbreaks in Eberfeld, Dusseldorf, and many other places ; 
Prussian troops marched to Dresden at the call of the Saxon govern- 
ment, and rescued the city, after a barricade-fight of six days, from 
the hands of the provisional government ; lastly, Prussian troops and 
mditia marched into Baden and the Bavarian Palatinate, when the 
grand duke sought assistance from Berlin, aud suppressed the revolu- 
tion at the moment when it threatened to seize upon the kingdom of 
Wirtemberg. For whilst these proceedings were taking place, the 
Frankfurt National Assembly was gradually losing its conservative 
members, so that at last the whole authority devolved upon the 
men of the Left. These determined to support themselves upon the 
revolution, and accordingly removed their sittings from Frankfurt to 
Stuttgart, to be nearer the revolutionary mass. The " Bump Parlia- 
ment," scarcely a hundred men strong, went over to Wirtemberg, 
established an "imperial regency" of five members, and gave a 
weight to the revolutionary movements, till the minister, Bomer, a 

gst2 



452 THE LATEST PERIOD. 

mau of firm hand and resolute temper, put a term to 
their proceedings, and compelled them to leave the king- 
dom. At the same time, the Russian soldiers, supported by the 
imperial forces, marched through the grand duchy of Baden, defeated 
the revolted troops and volunteers, under the Polish adventurer, 
Mierolawski, in several engagements, and again restored the old 
system. Some promoters of the insurrection, and among them the 
parliamentary member, Triitschler, were shot by the sentence of a 
court-martial ; but the immediate originators and leaders saved 
themselves by flying to republican countries. "Whilst the movement 
was still raging unsuppressed in the open field, the king of Prussia 
issued a proclamation to his people which was calculated to awaken 
their confidence. He promised to satisfy the longing for German 
unity by establishing a union with a popular representation ; and, 
shortly after, appeared a new imperial constitution on the basis of the 
Frankfurt proposal, in the name of the three kingdoms, Prussia, 
Hanover, and Saxony. The approval with which this proffered gift 
was received by all the moderate party, and in favour of which a large 
number of the Frankfurt parliament assembled in GTotha (the after 
parliament) declared themselves, contributed materially to the pacifi- 
cation of the disturbed countries. It was not long, however, before 
Saxony and Hanover, supported by Austria, retired from the " league 
of the three kings ;" upon which Prussia who, since swearing to the 
new constitution on February 6, 1850, has entered into the number 
of constitutional monarchies, attempted, at the Erfurt Diet, to unite 
the German States which still adhered to the league into a confede- 
racy. But this plan also met with opposition from Austria and the 
other kingdoms which required the restoration of the old Diet. 

§ 575. Owing to these divisions and parties, affairs in Schleswig- 
Holstein took a disastrous turn. The contest had begun anew in 
March, 1849, and the news flew like lightning in the dark night 
through the country that German troops had sunk the Danish ship 
of the fine, "Christian VIII.," by means of strand batteries ; and 
that the proud frigate, " Gefion," had been compelled 
to surrender, after the loss of her rudder. The victorious 
Germans soon marched to Frederica, and laid siege to this frontier 
fortress. But the activity of the allied troops of Prussia and Germany 
being paralyzed by the peace negotiations commenced with Denmark, 
the enemy found an opportunity to reinforce the garrison of Frede- 
rica, and afterwards to drive back the German army by an unex- 
pected sally, and to make themselves masters of the trenches and 
the artillery. A fresh truce was now arranged, in conse- 
quence of which Schleswig was placed under a neutral 
government, and garrisoned with German and Swedish troops. This 



THE LATEST REVOLUTIONARY TEMPESTS. 453 

truce became a peace in the following year, by which Schleswig- 
Holstein was to have resumed its former relations with Denmark. 
But the lieutenancy that had been established there during the war 
by the German central power would not accede to the peace, and 
determined, after the retreat of the Prussian garrison, to maintain its 
right by its own strength, and the voluntary assistance of the German 
nation. 

Conci/usion. The revolutionary storms of the years 1848 and 
1849 have just now reached -their termination. These two years 
were rich in hopes and experiences, in disappointments and griefs. 
Providence has once more placed the conduct and shaping of affairs 
in the hands of princes — may they employ this power wisely, and to 
the benefit of their people, that confidence may be once more restored 
to the minds of men ! For, true as it is, that no political or social ar- 
rangement can secure the true happiness of the people, unless a deeper 
morality and religion, a more active sense of civil and domestic virtue, 
and a warmer feeling of duty pre-exist in their minds ; so true is it 
also, that states can only prosper and nourish when the public faith 
between a prince and his people is firmly established, and the con- 
fidence in the honest and benevolent intentions of the government is 
exposed to no disturbance. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



B.C. 

Nimrod builds Babylon 2100 

Minus builds Nineveh 2000 

Abraham nourished 2000 

Joseph do. 1800 

Sesostris king ......... 1500 

Moses nourished ......... 1500 

Joshua do. ........ . 1450 

Trojan war ......... 1184 

Samuel nourished ........ 1150 

Heraclidse return to Peloponnesus ..... 1104 

Saul flourished 1095 

Mceris and Cheops 1080 

Codrus, king of Athens, dies ...... 1068 

David flourished 1050 

Solomon do 1000 

Eehoboam do. ........ 975 

Jeroboam do. ........ . 971 

Sardanapalus destroys himself ...... 888 

Lycurgus reforms the Spartan constitution .... 884 

Carthage founded ........ 880 

Necho (Pharaoh) 800 

Foundation of Rome ........ 753 

Annual Archons at Athens ....... 752 

First Messenian war 743 — 724 

Salmaneser flourishes ........ 730 

Salmaneser subdues Phoenicia ...... 730 

Ten tribes of Israel removed by Salmaneser . 722 

(Judah remains 130 years longer.) 

Sennacherib flourishes ........ 720 

Sennacherib besieges Jerusalem, but his army is destroyed . 720 

Archilochus the poet born at Paros ..... 700 

Numa Pompilius king of Eome ...... 700 

Second Messenian war ...... 687 — 670 

Psammetichus puts down the power of the Egyptian priests 

by Greek mercenaries ....... 650 

Tuliius Hostilius king of Eome 650 

Ancus Martius do. ...... 625 

Draco legislator ......... 624 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



455 



B.C. 

605 
600 
and 

600 
600 
600 
600 
600 
590 



Nineveh destroyed ..... 
Nebuchadnezzar begins to reign over Babylon 
Nebuchadnezzar plunders the Temple at Jerusalem 

removes the chief inhabitants 
Periander reigns in Corinth 
Sappho the poetess born at Lesbos 
Alcarus the poet born at Mitylene 
Tarquinius Priscus king of Rome 
Nebuchadnezzar's attempt on Tyre fails 
Judah taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, and remains 

therein seventy years : the city and Temple of Jerusalem 

destroyed .... 
Pythagoras flourishes, born at Samos 
Astyages the Median king flourished 
Cyrus the Great do. 

Pisistratus tyrant of Athens 
Servius Tullius king of Pome . 
Polycrates tyrant of Samos 
Babylon taken by the Persians,, and Cyrus 

leave to return home 
Tarquinius Superbus reigns . ■ . 

Cambyses conquers Egypt, and flourishes 

Hippias and Hipparchus begin to rule at Athens 

DaiTiis Hystaspes comes to the throne, and reigns 

The Temple at Jerusalem completed in the reign of Darius 

Republic established at Athens ..... 

Abolition of royalty in Rome ... 

Oppression of the plebeians by patricians for debt 

Secession to the Sacred Mount ..... 

Destruction of Miletus ... 

Coriolanus excites the resentment of the people, and is 

banished from Rome 
Battle of Marathon . 
Battle at the Pass of Thermopylae 
Battle of Salamis 
Battle of Platsea 

Banishment of Themistocles for ten years . 
Earthquake at Sparta ..... 

Ezra and Nehemiah rebuild Jerusalem 
Cincinnatus taken from the plough to be dictator 
Ambassadors sent to Grsecia Magna and Athens, to collect 

the laws of Solon and select others . . . . 452 

Decemvirs appointed ....... 450 

Herodotus born ........ 450 

Battle of Chaeronea 447 

The peace of Pericles . . . . . . . 445 

The plebeians obtain a share in the consulate . . . 444 

Military tribunes appointed ...... 442 

Isocrates flourished ....... 436—388 



588 
584 
575 
560 
560 
550 
550 
gives the Jews 

538 

from 533—509 

/ from 529 

\to 521 

527 

f from 521 

\ to 485 

515 

510 

509 

495 

494 

494 



Victories gained 

> by the Creeks < 

J over the Persians I 



490 
490 

480 
480 
479 
471 
465 
460 
458 



456 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



B.C. 

Thucydides born ........ 430 

Plato flourished 429 — 348 

Death of Pericles by plague, which visited Athens . . 429 

Athenians under Demosthenes capture Pylos . . . 425 

The peace of Kicias with Sparta ..... 421 
The Athenian expedition against Syracuse, led by Alci- 

biades, Nicias, and Lysimachus ..... 415 

Destruction of the Athenian fleet at JEgos Potamos . . 405 

Destruction of Athens by the Spartans . . . . 404 

Xenophon bom ........ 400 

Socrates dies by poison ....... 399 

Antisthenes flourished 396 

Veii subdued by Camillus ...... 396 

Demosthenes flourished ...... 385 — 332 

Peace of Antalcidas (Corinthian War) .... 387 

Death of M. Manlius (Capitolinus) 383 

Battle of Leuctra ..." 371 

Aristippus flourished ....... 370 

Battle of Mantinea 362 

Destruction of Sidon ....... 350 

"War between the Romans and Latins .... 342 

Peace between the Romans and Samnites .... 340 

The Latins are defeated at the battle of Vesuvius by the 

patriotism of Decius ....... 338 

Battle of Chseronea, Liberty of Greece ended . . . 338 

Battle of Granicus (Persians defeated) .... 334 

Darius Codomanus defeated at Issus .... 333 

Destruction of Tyre by Alexander ..... 332 

Battles of Arbela and Gangamela ..... 331 

Agis II., king of Sparta, defeated at Megalopolis . . 330 

Rupture between the Romans and Samnites . . . 325 

Diogenes flourished ........ 324 

Alexander the Great dies at Babylon .... 323 

Demosthenes destroys himself ...... 322 

Antigonus assumes the chief power after Alexander's death 321 
Syracuse besieged by Carthaginians, and Carthage by 

Syracusans ......... 317 

Antigonus is acknowledged regent of Alexander's empire . 316 

iEschines flourished ........ 314 

The Stoics flourished 312 

Battle of Issus. Defeat of Antigonus .... 301 
Samnites defeated at Lentinum by the devotion of the 

younger Decius ........ 295 

Samnites and confederates acknowledge the supremacy of 

Rome 290 

The Mamentines seize Messina, and devastate Syracuse . 289 
The translation of the Bible from Hebrew to Greek, called 

bhe Septuagint Version ...... 284 

Pyrrhus engaged in war with Rome ..... 281 

Theocritus the poet flourished ...... 280 

Euclid the mathematician flourished in Alexandria . . 2S0 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



457 



B.C. 

275 
272 
261 
260 

250 

242 

242 
240 
238 
230 



Pyrrlms defeated by the Romans at Beneventum 

Pyrrlms dies before Argos ...... 

The Romans win their first naval battle at Myla3 . - 
The Epicureans flourish ........ 

Aratus the Sicyon chosen commander-in-chief of the 
Achaean league ........ 

The Romans make a successful sally against the Cartha- 
ginians from Panormus ....... 

The Carthaginians, defeated at the iEgatian islands, consent 
to peace, and give up Sicily ...... 

Agis III., king of Sparta, flourished ..... 

Sicily made a Roman province ...... 

Cleomenes III., king of Sparta, flourished 
The Cisalpine Cauls make an inroad into Etruria, but are 
defeated. The Roman province Callia Cisalpina esta- 
blished 222 

Defeat of the Spartans by the combined forces of the 

Achaeans and Macedonians at Sellasia .... 221 

Hannibal crosses the Apennines . . . . . 217 

Defeat of the Romans at Cannae, by Hannibal . . . 216 

They successfully engage twice with the Carthaginians . 215 

Marcellus besieges Syracuse ...... 214 

Archimedes the mathematician flourished in Sicily . . 212 

Syracuse, by the aid of Archimedes, holds out three years 

before it is taken and destroyed ..... 212 

The Capuans, deserted by Hannibal, surrender to Rome . 211 

Hasdrubal crosses the Alps to join Hannibal . . . 208 

Philopcemen reduces Sparta and destroys it 207 

Hasdrubal is slain, and his army destroyed, at the river 

Metaurus 207 

Scipio passes over into Africa ...... 204 

Battle of Zama. Defeat of the Carthaginians . . . 202 

Philip compelled by the Romans to acknowledge the inde- 
pendence of Greece ....... 197 

Perseus defeated at Pydna by Paulus iEmilius . . . 168 

Macedonia made a Roman province by Metellus . . 148 

Corinth destroyed by Mummius ..... 146 

The Maccabees are governors and high priests of Judea 142 — 135 
JN"umantia taken by the younger Scipio .... 135 

Tib. Gracchus proposes the renewal of the agrarian law . 133 

His brother, Caius Gracchus, proposes the same after his 

death 123 

The attempts of C. Gracchus utterly defeated . . . 121 

The Romans defeated by the Teutones and Cimbri at 

Carinthia ......... 113 

MeteUus sent into Africa against Jugurtha, and retrieves 

the character of the Roman army ..... 109 

C. Marius chosen consul by the people .... 107 

The Teutones are defeated at Aqua? Sextiae by Marius . 102 

Marius chosen consul for the sixth time .... 100 

The Social war 90—88 



458 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Sylla sent against Mithridates (first Mithridatic war) 

Athens captured. Delphi plundered by Sylla . 

Marius gratifies his revenge : is chosen consul for the 

seventh time, but dies a few months after 

The death of Sylla 

The second Mithridatic Avar ..... 

Pompey puts down the rebels under Sertorius . 
The revolt of the slaves ...... 

They are defeated by M. Crassus on the banks of the 

Silarus ........ 

Lucullus defeats Tigranes at Tigranocerta 

Pompey brings the Armenians into submission, and defeats 

Mithridates ........ 

Pompey turns his arms against the pirates in the East 
The Tx'iumvirate formed (Pompey, Cassar, Crassus) 
Caesar made governor of Graul ..... 

Caesar's wars in Graul ...... 

The last insurrection put down at Alesia, by Caesar . 
The second civil war at Pome ..... 

Caesar advances upon Pome with his army 

Pompey defeated at Pharsalus : is assassinated in Egypt 

The hopes of the republicans at Pome and their army 

destroyed at Thapsus ...... 

The remnants of Pompey' s friends defeated at Munda 
Caesar assassinated ....... 

The second Triumvirate formed (Octavius'J Anthony, Le- 

pidus) . 

The republicans, under Brutus and Cassius, defeated at 

Philippi ........ 

The victory of Octavius at Actium .... 

Egypt becomes a province of the Roman empire 

Augustus, emperor ....... 



B.C. 

88 

87 

86 

78 

74—65 

73 

72 

71 
69 

66 
67 
60 
58 
58—50 
52 
49,48 
49 
48 

46 
45 
44 

43 

42 

31 

30 

B.C. 30 

A.D. 14 



The Eoman legions under Varus defeated by the Ger- 
mans 
Augustus dies at Nola 
Tiberius emperor 
Caligula do. 
Claudius do. 
Nero do. 

Galba, Otho, Vitellius, emperors . 
Vespasian emperor 
Jerusalem destroyed by Titus 
Vespasian succeeded by his son Titus 
Domitian emperor 
Nerva do. 

Trajan do. 

Adrian do. 

The Jewish nation, as a state, at an end 



A.D. 

9 

14 

14—37 

37—41 

41—54 

54—68 

68—70 

70—79 

70 

79—81 

81—96 

96-98 

98—117 

117—138 

125 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



459 



Antoninus Pius emperor 
Marcus Aurelius do. 


Commodus 


do. 


Pertinax 


do. 


Septunius Severus 


do. 


Caracalla 


do. 


Heliogabalus 
Alexander Severus 


do. 
do. 


Philippus Arabus 
Decius 


do. 
do. 


Gallienus 


do. 


Aurelianus 


do. 



Tacitus (descendant of the historian) do 

Probus do. 

Cams do. 

Diocletian do. 

Constantine overthrows Maxentius at the Milvian bridge 

and takes possession of Rome 
Constantine becomes sole emperor. He favours the 

Christians .... 

Constantinus emperor . 
Julian restores the renown of the Roman army in the 

Netherlands .... 
Julian proclaimed emperor 
Constantius' death 
Julian reigns as emperor 
Jovian do. do. 

The empire divided'/ Valens rules over the East 

r (_ Vaientiman 1. rules over the West 

The Goths devastate Thessaly, Central Greece, and the 

Peloponnesus : made to retreat by Stilicho 
Alaric devastates the banks of the Po, but is obliged to 

retreat ..... 
Duke Radagais and his barbarous horde defeated by 

Stilicho ....... 

Rome besieged, taken, and plundered by Alaric 

Adolf founds the kingdom of the "West Goths in South 

Gaul ....... 

Valentinian III. reigned .... 

Clodion defeats the Alemanni at Zulpich 

iEtius defeats Attila on the Catalaunian plains 

Attila retreats into Hungary 

An end is put to the "Western Empire of Rome by 

Odoacer ........ 

Clodion, king of the Pranks, conquers the country be 

tween the Seine and Loire .... 

Clodion puts to death the chiefs of the Prank tribes 
Justinian emperor of the Byzantine empire 
Amalasanta, Theodoric's daughter, murdered . 
Belisarius defends Rome for twelve months against the 

Goths 



A.D. 

138—161 
161—180 
180—192 
193 
193—211 
211—217 
218—222 
222—235 
243—249 
249—251 
259—268 
270—275 
275, 276 
276—282 
282—284 
284—305 

312 

325 

357—360 

357 

360 

361—363 

363, 364 

364—378 

364—395 

396 

403 

406 
410 

412 
425—455 
436 
451 
452 

467 

486 

507 

527—565 

534 

537 



460 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A.D. 

Totila made king of the Goths ..... 540 
Tejas made king of the Goths, but slain in a battle with 

Narses 554 

Mohammed flourished ....... 571 632 

Mohammed's flight from Mecca (Hegira), 16th July . 622 

Abu Bekir succeeds Mohammed ..... 632 — 634 

Omar khalif 634 — 644 

Persia becomes subject to the Moslems . . . 634 

Alexandria taken by the Mohammedans under Amru . 640 

Othman succeeds to the khalifate ..... 644 — 656 

The Ommiades take the khalifate ..... 660 
The Mohammedans carry their arms through Cyprus, 

Rhodes, Asia Minor, and attack Byzantium . . 668 — 675 

Leo the Isaurian emperor of Byzantium . . . 717 — 741 
Charles Martel defeats the Saracens between Tours and 

Poictiers ......... 732 

Constantine Copronymus emperor of Byzantium . . 741 — 745 

The dynasty of the Ommiades overthrown . . . 752 

Pepin dies, and divides his kingdom between his sons . 768 

Charlemagne made emperor of the Pranks . . . 771 
The West Goths overthrown at Xeres de la Prontera by 

the Arabians ........ 771 

Charlemagne takes the fortress of Eresburg, and compels 

the Saxons to make peace ...... 772 

Charles conquers Pavia, and unites Upper Italy to his 

empire ......... 774 

Leo IV. emperor of Byzantium ..... 775 — 780 

Charles the second time subdues the Saxons . . . 777 
Thassilo, duke of Bavaria, attempts to throw off the 

Prank yoke ... .... 788 

Irene empress of Byzantium ..... 800 

Leo the Armenian emperor of Byzantium . . . 813 — 820 

Louis the Debonnaire flourished ..... 814 — S40 

Egbert establishes the hierarchy in England . . . 827 

The sons of Louis take up arms against him ... 836 

Louis dies near Jugelheim ...... 840 

The treaty of partition of Verdun ..... 843 

Basflrus the Macedonian emperor of Byzantium . . 867 

Alfred the Great flourished 871 — 901 

The kingdom in Norway founded by Harold Pairhair; 

and in Denmark by Gorm the Old .... 875 

Charles the Pat flourished 876 — 8S7 

Arnulf flourished 887 — 898 

Charles the Simple flourished 898—929 

Kingdom formed in Sweden by the Ynglians . . 900 

Conrad I. elected emperor of Germany .... 911 — 919 

Henry the Fowler 916 — 936 

I le defeats the 1 1 migarians at Merseburg . . . 933 

Otto the Great flourished 936 — 973 

He puts an end to the depreciations of the Hungarians . 955 

The victory of Otto over the Hungarians on the Lechfield 973 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



461 



Otto II. emperor of Germany 

Otto III. do. 

Hugh Capet king of the Franks 

Stephen the Pious king of Hungary . 

Vladimir the Great emperor of Russia 

Canute the Great flourished 

Conrad II. emperor of Germany 

Canute the Great of Denmark and Olaf of Norway 

become Christians 
The Moorish dynasty in Spain divided 
Henry III. emperor of Germany 
Edward the Confessor 
Robert Guiscard (a JSTorman noble) becomes master of 

part of Lower Italy ...... 

William the Conqueror overthrows Harold at Hastings 
Robert Guiscard' s son, Bohemond, increases his 

territory ..... 

Henry IV. defeats the Saxons at Unstruth 
He personally implores the withdrawal of the ban of 

excommunication at Rome 
Gregory deposed, and Clement III. elected pope 
Henry's expedition against pope Gregory . 
Pope Gregory dies at Salerno 
At the Assembly at Clermont pope Urban II. calls 

upon Europe to recover Palestine . 
The first Crusade .... 
A large army under celebrated leaders arrives at Antioch 

on its way to Jerusalem 
They come in sight of Jerusalem 
Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders, July 15 
The Cid (Campeador) flourished 
Henry V. emperor of Germany 
Lothaire the Saxon emperor of Germany . 
Roger II. flotuished, and forms the kingdom of Naples 

and Sicily ...... 

Louis VII. king of Prance 

Conrad III. emperor of Germany 

Henry the Proud (House of Welf).dies 

The second Crusade originated by St. Bernhard 

Grisa II. king of Hungary 

Frederick Barbarossa emperor of Germany 

Henry II., of Anjou, king of England 

Frederick undertakes a second expedition against 

Milan 

Death of archbishop Thomas-a-Becket 

The Germans, under Frederick, defeated at Legnano 

Frederick deprives Henry the Lion of his dukedoms 

Philip Augustus II. king of France . 

The Crusaders defeated at Tiberias, and many towns 

together with Jerusalem, taken by Saladin 
Richard Lion-heart ascends the English throne ■. 



A.D. 

973—983 

983—1002 

987—996 

1000 

1000 

1017—1035 

1024—1039 

1025 

1038 
1039—1056 
1041—1066 

1060 
1066 

1072 
1075 

1077 
1081 
1083 

1084 

1085 
1096—1099 

1097 
1099 
1099 
1099 
1106—1125 
1125—1137 

1130—1154 

1137—1180 

1138—1152 

1142 

1149 

1150 

1152—1190 

1154—1189 

1158 
1170 
1176 
1179 
1180—1223 

1187 

1189, 1190 



462 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Henry III. emperor of Germany .... 

The news of the taking of Jerusalem gives rise to the 

third Cnisade ..... 

John Lackland king of England 
Waldemar II. the Conqueror king of Denmark 
The fourth Crusade ..... 
The Cross is preached, by order of the Pope, against 

Raimond VI. and the Albigenses 
Philip of Swabia murdered 
Innocent III. renews the war between the Gruelphs 

and Ghibellines .... 
Twenty thousand children leave their homes for the 

Holy Land ..... 
Magna Charta granted 
Henry III. king of England 
Frederick II. emperor of Germany 
The House of Zahringen becomes extinct 
Louis VIII. king of Erance 
S. Louis do. 

Waldemar, king of Denmark, made prisoner by Henry 

of Schwerin ...... 

Zengis Khan, chief of the Moguls, or Tatars 
The fifth Crusade undertaken by Erederick II. 
Jerusalem and a part of Palestine ceded to him 
Charter ("The Golden Privilege") obtained by the 

Hungarians from Andreas II. 
Russia made tributary to the Moguls 
Pope Gregory IX. dies 
The Christians are defeated at Gaza by the Carismians 
Henry Raspe, of Thuringia, rival emperor to Erede- 
rick II. ..... 

Alfonso X. king of Spain 

Manfred defeated at Beneventum by treachery . 
Conradine falls into the hands of Charles of Anjou 
Egypt falls into the hands of the Mamelukes 
Edward I. king of England .... 

Ottocar, king of Bohemia, defeated at Marchfield 
Rudolf of Hapsburg chosen emperor of Germany 
The French are slain on the Sicilian vespers 
Peter of Aragon frees Sicily of Charles of Anjou 
Dispute between Bruce and Baliol for the Scottish crown 
Philip the Fair king of France 
Adolf of Nassau emperor of Germany 
The Christians retire from Syria, when the Mamelukes 

take Antioch ..... 
Adolf of Nassau is defeated and slain in the battle at 

Gollheim ..... 
Albert of Austria ernpcror of Germany 
Osman makes Prusa in Bithynia his capital, and carries 

on war against Greece . 
Pope Boniface VIII. dies . 



1190- 



1199 
1202— 
1203, 



1216— 
1218— 

1223— 
1226 



A.D. 

-1197 

1192 
-1216 
1241 
1201 

1205 
1208 

1210 

1213 
1215 
1272 
1250 
1218 
1226 
-1270 

1227 
1227 
1228 
1229 

1231 
1237 
1241 
1244 



1246 
1258—1284 
1260 
1268 
1270 

-1307 
1273 

-1293 

12S2 



1272- 
1273- 



1285— 
1291— 



1298- 



1283 
1314 
1298 

1291 

1298 
-1308 

1299 
1303 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



463 



Pope Clement V. removes his court from Eome to 

Avignon ....... 

Edward II. on the English throne 

Henry VII. of Luxemburg emperor of Germany 

The persecution of the Templars by Philip the Pair . 1 

Molay, their Grand Master, tried upon various charges J 

Henry VII. makes an expedition into Italy 

Molay condemned and burnt .... 

Leopold defeated by the Swiss at Margarten 
Vladislaus IV. king of Poland .... 

Frederick the Pair defeated at Miihldorf . 
Alfonso XL king of Spain .... 

Death of Leopold, the brother of Prederick the Pair 
Edward III. king of England .... 

Philip VI. king of Prance .... 

Cashnir the Great king of Poland 

The tax, Alcavala, introduced into Spain 

Waldemar III. king of Denmark 

Louis the Great (of Anjou) elected king of Hungary 

Johanna I. queen of Naples .... 

Louis of Bavaria has a rival for the empire in the son 

of John of Bohemia 
Battle of Cressy (English victorious) 
A new republican Borne established 
Charles IV. emperor of Germany 
John the Good king of Prance 
Charles IV. opened the German University in Prague 
Louis of Bavaria lost his life in a bear-hunt near 

Munich ....... 

Peter the Cruel of Spain ..... 

The Swiss obtain their freedom by the battle of Sem 

pach . . . 

The death of Cola di Bienzi, instigator of the rebellion 

at Borne .... 
Victory of the English at Poictiers 
Insurrection in Paris 
Calais and the south-west of Prance ceded to the 

English .... 

Murad I., chief of the Osmans, subdues Asia Minor 

and passes into Europe 
Philip the Bold duke of Burgundy . 
Magnus II. deposed from the Swedish throne 
John the Good returns to his captivity, and dies 
Charles V. king of Prance 
The crown of Poland given to Louis the Great of 

Hungary .... 
Death of the Black Prince 
Calais alone left to the English 
Bichard II. king of England 
Wenceslaus emperor of Germany 
Charles VI. king of Prance 



1307- 
1308- 



A.D. 

1305 
-1327 
-1313 

1310 



1310 
1312 
1315 
1320 
1322 
1324—1340 
1326 
-1377 
-1347 
-1370 
1340 
-1375 
-1348 
-1382 



1346 
1346 
1347 

-1378 
-1364 
1348 



1327- 
1328- 
1333- 

1340- 
1342- 
1343- 



1347- 
1347- 



1349 
1350—1369 

1351 



1354 
1356 
1358 

1360 

-1389 

-1404 

1363 

1364 

-1380 

-1382 

1377 

-1399 
-1400 
-1422 



1361- 
1363- 



1364- 



1370- 



1377- 
1378- 
1380- 



464 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



"Wickliff flourished .... 

Battle of Sempach .... 

The Jagellons retain the crown of Poland 

The great cities' war commenced 

Bajazet, chief of the Osmans, continued the victories of 

his father, Murad I. 
The three Scandinavian kingdoms under one sceptre by 

the union of Calrnar ..... 
Henry IV. (Lancaster) king of England 
Zurich, Berne, and Zug join the Swiss Confederation 
The electors depose Wenceslaus from the empire of 

Germany ..... 
Bupert of the Palatinate is chosen emperor 
The Turks are defeated, and Bajazet made prisoner by 

the Moguls, under Tamerlane, at Angora 
John sans Pceur duke of Burgundy 
Sigismund emperor of Germany 
Henry V. king of England 
Council of Constance 
Johanna II. queen of Naples 
Huss condemned 
Victory of the English under Henry V. at Agincourt 
Alfonso V. of Spain . 
Wenceslaus died of apoplexy 
Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy 
Murad II. restores the Ottoman empire 
Death of Henry V. of England, and Charles VI. of 

Prance ...... 

Henry VI. succeeds to the English throne 

Charles VII. to that of Prance . 

Cosmo de Medici (Plorence) 

Joan of Arc delivers Orleans 

She is captured hy the English and burnt 

Council of Basle .... 

The Taborites defeated at Prague 

Calais remains the only possession of the English in 

Prance ..... 
Charles' entry into Paris . 
Albert II. of Austria emperor 
Frederick III. do. 

John Guttenburg of Mayence invents printing 
Hungarians and Poles defeated by the Turks at Warna 
Cashnir IV. on the Polish throne 
Christian I. (Oldenburgh) of Denmark 
Nicholas V. Pope, foimder of the Vatican library 
The House of Visconti extinct in Milan 
Mohammed II. on the Ottoman throne: he takes 

Constantinople, and puts an end to the Byzantine 

empire . . . - 

Sebastian Brandt, poet of Strasburg, flourished 
Matthias Corvinus (son of Huniades) made king 



A.D. 

1384 

13S6 

1386—1572 

1388 

1389—1403 
1399 



1397 
1413 
1399 



1400- 



1400 
-1410 



1402 
1419 
1437 
1422 
1418 
1435 
1415 
1415 
1416—1456 
1419 
1467 
1451 



1404- 
1410- 
1413- 
1414- 
1414- 



1419 
1421 



1422- 
1422- 
1428- 



1422 
-1461 
-1461 
-1464 

1429 

1431 
1431—1449 

1433 



1437- 
1440- 



11-17- 
1448- 
1450- 



1451- 
1458- 
1458- 



1435 

1436 

-1439 

-1493 

1440 

1444 

-1492 

-1481 

-1460 

1450 



-1481 
-1521 
-1490 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Palgrave Frederick's (the Victorious) victory near 

Seckenheim ........ 

Louis XI. on tlie French throne .... 

Edward IV. (York) king of England . 

Dieter of Mayence deposed ..... 

Ivan Vasilyevitsck the Great, of Moscow, throws off 

the Mogul yoke ....... 

Alexander Castriota maintains his independence against 

the Turks among the mountains of Albania and 

Epirus ..... 
Charles the Bold duke of Burgundy 
Steno Sture king of Sweden (separated from Denmark) 
Lorenzo the Magnificent (Florence) . 
Copernicus, the astronomer, flourished 
Isabella queen of Spain . . 

Ariosto, the poet, flourished 
Michael Angelo flourished 
Charles of Burgundy defeated at Granson by the Swiss 
Maximilian of Austria foiled the attempt of Louis XI 

upon the dukedom of Burgundy 
Frederick king of Spain 
Raphael, the painter, flourished . 
Bichard III. of England 
Charles VIII. of France 
Battle of Bosworth 

Henry VII. (House of Tudor) king of England 
Bartholomew Diaz, setting out from Congo, reaches 

the southern extremity of Africa 
Louis XII. of France ..... 

Maximilian I. emperor of Germany 
Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet, flourished 
The land-peace established at the Diet of "Worms 
The return of the Medici ..... 
Maximilian compelled to admit the independence of 

the Swiss in Germany .... 
Louis XII. of France conquers Milan 
Charles V. of Burgundy .... 
Frederick of Aragon gets possession of Naples 
Death of Columbus at Valladolid 
The League of Cambray, for dividing the Venetian 

territory .... 

Henry VIII. of England . 
Julius II. the warlike pope 
Albuquerque makes Goa the capital of the Portuguese 

colony in India 
Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean 
The Portuguese establish colonies and factories in 

Ceylon and on the Coromandel coast 
" Battle of the Giants" of Marignano. Swiss defeated 
Luther denies the divine origin of the supremacy of the 

pope ......... 



1461- 
1461- 



1461 
-1483 
-1483 

1462 



1462—1505 



1467- 
1471- 
1472- 
1473- 
1474- 
1474- 
1474- 



1467 
-1477 
-1504 
-1492 
-1543 
-1504 
-1533 
-1563 
1476 



1479 
1516 
1520 
1485 
1498 
1485 
1485—1509 



1479 
1483 
1483 
1483 



1493- 
1493- 
1494- 



1509- 



1486 
-1515 
-1495 
-1576 
1495 
1498 

1499 
1500 
1500 
1504 
1506 

1508 

-1547 

1510 

1510 
1514 

1515 
1515 

1519 



Hh 



466 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Leonardo da Vinci flourished ..... 
Steno Sture slain in battle with Christian II. Sweden 

reunited to Denmark ..... 
Soliman the Magnificent on the Ottoman throne 
Discovery and conquest of Mexico by Cortez 
Luther's doctrines denounced as heretical, and his 

writings sentenced to be burnt 
Luther separates himself from the Church of Rorne by 

burning the bull of excommunication 
Slaughter at Stockholm ..... 
The Knights of St. John, expelled from Rhodes, receive 

Malta 

Luther establishes peace at Wittemberg by his 

preaching ....... 

Adrian VI. pope ...... 

Gustavus made king of Sweden by the Diet of Strengnas 
Camoens the Portuguese poet .... 

The defeat of the French at Pavia by the Germans 

Hungary divided on the death of Louis II. at Mohaes 

Macchiavelli, the statesman, flourished 

Rome taken by the Spaniards and Germans 

Gustavus introduced Christianity into his dominions 

Andrea Doria frees Genoa of the French . 

Half of Hungary falls into the power of the Ottomans 

at Mohaes ....... 

Pizarro and Almajio conquer Peru 

Diet of Spire ....... 

The Ladies' peace of Cambray .... 

Charles V. restores the Medici, expelled a second time 
The men of Zurich defeated, and Zwingle slain at 

Kappel ......... 

League between the Landgrave of Hesse and Elector 

of Saxony at Smalcald ..... 
Ivan Vasilyevitsch II. the first czar . 
The Bible completed in German by Luther 
Christian III. on the Danish throne introduces 

Christianity into Denmark .... 
Contest between Pizarro and Almajio. Discovery of Chil 
Charles V. captures Tunis .... 

The ten years' truce of Nice .... 
The Reformed religion established at Leipsic and 

Dresden ....... 

Charles sends a second expedition against the African 

pirates ........ 

Francis !. commences a fourth war against Charles V 
The order of the Jesuits founded by Ignatius Loyola 
Paul III. pope of Rome ..... 

Correggio flourished ...... 

The peace of Crespy ...... 

The crown of Sweden made hereditary in the male line 

of Vasca ........ 



A.D. 

1519 

1520 
-1526 
1521 

1520 

1520 
1520 

1522 

1522 
1523 
1523 
-1569 
1525 
1526 
1527 
1527 
1527 
1528 

1529 
-1535 
1529 
1529 
1530 

1531 



1531 

1533—1588 

1534 



1520- 
1520, 

June 16, 

Dec. 10, 



March, 
1522, 

1524- 



May 6, 



1529- 



1534- 
1535- 



1542- 
1543- 



-1559 
-1538 
1535 
1538 

1539 

1541 
-1544 
1542 
-1549 
1543 
1544 

1544 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



467 



A.D. 

Council of Trent opened ...... Dec. 13, 1545 

Death of Luther Feb. 18, 1546 

Fiesco attempts the overthrow of the house of Doria . 1547 

Henry II. on the French throne .... 1547 — 1559 

Edward VI. of England 1547—1553 

Cervantes flourished ..:.... 1547 — 1616 
Grasca sent to settle the affairs of Peru . . . 1548 

Albert Durer flourished . . - . . . . 1548 

Maurice of Saxony rises against Charles V., and takes 

possession of Augsburg ...... March, 1552 

Lopez de Vega, Spanish poet ..... 1552 — 1635 

The victory of Maurice over Albert of Brandenburg 

near Sivershausen. He dies from a wound received 

in the battle . . . . 

Mary Tudor queen of England . 
Lucas Cranach flourished . 
Paul IV. pope .... 
Phdip II. of Spain 
Ferdinand I. emperor of Germany 
Elizabeth queen of England 
Peace of Cambrensis . 
The Heidelberg Catechism drawn up 
Pius IV. pope .... 
Francis II. on the French throne 
Death of Melancthon 
Erich XIV. king of Sweden 
Charles IX. king of France 
Hans Holbein flourished . 
Shakspeare, the English poet 
. Maximilian II. emperor of Grermany 
Four hundred nobles subscribe to the compromise, and 

draw up a petition against the inquisition in the 

Netherlands ..... 
Mary Stuart marries Darnley 
Galileo flourished .... 
Death of Soliman at Sigeth (Hungary) 
Mary's favourite, Bizzio, murdered 
Duke Alba of Spain sent to subdue the Netherlands . 
Death of Darnley by the explosion of the house in 

which he lay ill ...... . 

John III. king of Sweden ..... 

Count Egmont and other nobles put to death in the 

Netherlands ........ 

The Huguenots defeated at St. Denis by the Catholics 
Mary Stuart's flight into England .... 

Earls of Northumberland and "Westmoreland fail to set 

Mary at liberty . ... 
Henry of Beam places himself at the head of the 

Huguenots . . . . .~ 

Kepler flourished ....... 

Gregory XIII. pope (arranged the present calendar) . 

h h 2 



1553- 

1555- 
1556- 
1556- 
1558- 



1559- 
1559- 

1560- 
1560- 

1564- 
1564- 



1553 
-1558 

1553 
-1559 
-1598 
-1564 
-1603 

1559 

1559 
-1565 
-1560 

1560 
-1568 
-1574 

1563 
-1616 
-1576 



Nov. 1565 
1565 

1565—1631 
1566 
1566 

1567—1573 

Feb. 10, 1567 
1568—1592 

1568 
1568 
1568 

1569 

1570 
1572—1631 
1572—1585 



468 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



recognize 



The Northern States of the Netherlands 
William of Orange as Stadtholder . 

Louis of Zuniga and Requescens sent to succeed Alba 
in the Netherlands 

Henry III. king of France 

Don Juan succeeds Zuniga 

The alliance of Ghent 

Titian flourished .... 

Rudolf II., emperor of Germany 

King Sebastian of Spain defeated at Alcassar by the 
Moors ...... 

Alexander Farnese succeeds Don Juan 

The Union of Utrecht 

The domination of Spain over Portugal lasts sixty years 

William of Orange assassinated . 

Sixtus V. rose from a shepherd boy to be pope 

Execution of Mary Stuart in England 

The Invincible Armada sent against England 

Henry of Guise creates a rebellion in Paris 

Henry IV. besieges Paris .... 

John Fischart, poet of Mayence, flourished 

Henry IV. becomes a Catholic . 

Tasso the poet flourished .... 

Henry allows liberty of conscience to the Calvinists by 
the Edict of Nantes 

Charles IX. king of Sweden 

Calderon, Spanish poet 

James I. (Stuart) king of England 

The Protestant Union in Germany concluded at the 
instigation of the elector of the Palatinate 

A truce between the Netherlander and Spaniards 
the independence of the former acknowledged . 

Henry IV. murdered by Ravaillac 

Louis XIII. of France 

Matthias on the imperial throne 

Imperial House of Romanoff (Russia) 

Death of Matthias .... 

Frederick V. of the Palatinate made king of Bohemia 

The House of Commons protests against the abridg- 
ment of its privileges ...... 

Ernest of Mansfield, and George Frederick of Baden 
Durlach, defeat Tilly, the general of Ferdinand II., 
at Wiesloch ....... 

Richelieu changes the government in France 

Charles I. of England ...... 

Frederick of Bohemia defeated by the troops of Ferdi- 
nand II. at White Hill 

Ernest von Mansfield and Christian of Brunswick die 

Christian IV. defeated by Tilly at Lutter . 

The validity of the Petition of Right acknowledged 

Duke of Buckingham assassinated .... 



1572 

1573—1576 
1574—1589 
1576—1578 
1576 
1576 
1576—1612 

1578 

1578—1592 

1579 

1580—1610 

1581 

1585—1590 

1587 

1588 

May 12, 1588 

1590 

1591 

1593 

1595 

1598 
1600-1611 
1600—1687 
1603—1625 

1608, 1609 

1609 

1610 

1610—1613 

1612—1619 

1613—1676 

May 20, 1619 

Nov. 1619 

1621 



April, 1622 

1621 

1625—1649 

Nov. 7, 1625 
1626 

Aug. 27, 1626 
1628 
1629 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



469 



A.D. 

1629 
1629 



1630 

Feb. 1631 

May 16, 1631 



1634 

1635 
1636 

1637—1657 
1637 
1639 
1640 

1640—1688 
1641 

1642—1646 



Christian recovers his lands by the peace of Lubeck . 
The Edict of Restitution published by Ferdinand II. 
Pomerania surrendered to' Gfustavus Adolphus of 
Sweden ........ 

Diet of Leipsic ....... 

Magdeburg taken by Tilly ..... 

The imperial army defeated at the battle of Leipsic and 

Breitenfield Sept. 7, 1631 

The victory of the Swedes at Lutzen . . . Nov. 16, 1632 

Execution of Caiquet of Cuiquillars .... 1632 

Alliance of Heilbron (Swedes and Germans) . . 1633 

Wallenstein, the general of Ferdinand II,, murdered Feb. 25, 1634 

The peace of Prague between the German princes and 

the emperor ....... 

Bichelieu encourages the Swedes in their undertakings 
in Germany ...... 

Saxony and Thuringia conquered by them . 
Ferdinand III. emperor of Germany 
Episcopal form of service repelled from Scotland 
Death of Bernhard of "Weimar .... 

Charles calls a parliament after eleven years 
Frederick William elector of Brandenburg 

Strafford and Laud condemned of high treason 

Civil war between Charles and the parliament . 

The Swedes defeat the imperial army at Leipsic, and 
compel the Danish king to a disadvantageous peace 

Louis XIV. on the French throne 

Christina queen of Sweden .... 

Battle of Marston-Moor . . . . < . 

Contests between the Puritans (Presbyterians) and 
Radicals (Independents) .... 

Charles defeated at Naseby .... 

Alexis compels the Cossacks to acknowledge Russian 
supremacy . . . . . • • 

Charles delivered prisoner to the parliamentarians 

Peace of Westphalia . . . . • 

Cromwell marches upon London to give the Indepen 
dents the superiority in parliament 

Escape of Charles I. . . . . . 

Eighty-one Presbyterians carried by force from parlia 
ment .....-•• 

"War of the Fronde 

Execution of Charles I. .... 

Prince of Wales recalled from Holland, and acknow 
ledged as Charles II. by the Presbyterians 

Cromwell's victory over the Scots at Dunbar 

The royal army overthrown' at Worcester . 

Navigation act passed in England 

Long parliament dissolved by Cromwell 

Cromwell dissolves by force his second parliament 

Mazarin's return to Paris 



1643- 



1642 

1715 

1644 

July 3, 1644 



Feb. 1645 
June 14, 1645 



1645- 



1676 
1646 
1647 



June, 1647 
Nov. 1648 

Dec. 1648 

1648—1653 

Jan. 30, 1649 

1650 
1650 
1651 
1651 
April, 1653 
Dec. 1653 
1653 



470 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Christina abdicates in favour of her cousin, Charles 

Gustavus ....... 

Charles X. of Sweden ..... 

Rattle of Warsaw ...... 

Emperor Leopold takes up arms to secure the crown of 

Spain for his son ...... 

Cromwell's death ...... 

Rump parliament restored and dissolved by the army- 
Charles II. returns as king . . . . 

Oliva, king of the Poles, makes peace with Sweden 

Charles XI. of Sweden 

Death of Mazarin ...... 

Spanish war ....... 

Louis XIV. compelled to surrender the greater part of 

his conquests in the Spanish Netherlands 
The Austrian government executes the leaders of the 

insurrection in Hungary .... 

Louis XIV. carries his arms against Holland (Dutch 

war) ........ 

Moliere died ....... 

Spain and Germany join hi the war against Trance 
The Swedes defeated by Frederick William at Fehr 

bellin ........ 

Feodor czar ....... 

The peace of Ximeguen ..... 

Habeas Corpus act ..... 

Strasburg taken from the Germans by Louis XIV. 
The Turks defeated before the walls of Vienna by the 

imperial army ...... 

Peter Corneille, French dramatic poet 

Peace concluded with France for twenty years at 

Regensburg ....... 

James II. ascended the English throne 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. 
James fled from England ..... 

Frederick I. king of Prussia .... 

The French take and burn Spire 

Montesquieu flourished ..... 

War of Orleans ...... 

Peter the Great czar ..... 

French defeated in the battle of La Hogue 
Lafontaine died ...... 

Voltaire flourished ...... 

Death of king John Sobieski of Poland 

Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, chosen king of 

Poland 

Charles XII. of Sweden ..... 

Peace of Ryswick ...... 

James II., at the head of the Catholic Irish, defeated 

at the Boyne ...... 

Peace of Carlowitz ...... 

Racine died ....... 



A.D. 

1654 

1654—1660 

July, 1656 

1657-1705 

Sept. 3, 165S 

AprU, 1659 

May 29, 1660 

1660 

1660—1697 

March 9, 1661 

1667, 1668 

1668 

1671 



1672- 


-1679 




1673 




1674 




1675 


1676- 


-1682 




1679 




1679 


Sept 


1681 


Sept 


16S3 




1684 


Aug. 15 


,1684 


1685- 


-1688 


Oct 


1685 


Dec 


1688 


1688- 


-1713 


June, 


1689 


1689- 


-1755 


1689- 


-1697 


1689- 


-1725 




1692 




1694 


1694- 


-1778 




1696 




1697 


1697- 


-1718 




1697 


July, 


1699 




1699 




1699 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



471 



Death of Charles II. of Spain ..... 

Charles of Sweden besieges Copenhagen 

Frederick I. solemnly crowned at Konigsburg 

Anne queen of England ...... 

General Catinat defeated, and the duke of Savoy and 

Piedmont brought over to the side of Austria by 

prince Eugene ...... 

Charles of Sweden defeats the Prussians near Narva 
Spanish war of succession .... 

Surrender of Warsaw to Charles XII. 

The rise of the Tyrolese ..... 

Charles obtains the deposition of Augustus, king of 

Poland ....... 

Peter the Great founds St. Petersburg 

Bossuet died ....... 

Battle of Hochstadt (Blenheim) 
Stanislaus Lexinski elected king of Poland 
Capture of Gibraltar by the English . 
Joseph I. emperor . . ... 

Defeat of the French at Ramilies by Marlborough 
The French defeated at Turin by prince Eugene 
Peace of Altranstadt ..... 

Scottish representatives admitted into parliament 
Victory of Almanza ...... 

Battle of Ouclenarde won by Marlborough and prince 

Eugene ....... 

Charles XII. makes an expedition against Moscow 
Charles's army suffers greatly from the severe winter 
The SAvedish army defeated at Pultowa 
Battle of Malplaquet. Defeat of the French 
Death of Joseph I. ..... . 

Charles XII. escapes into Turkey, where he is honour 

ably received ...... 

Boileau died ....... 

Charles YI. emperor of Germany 

The army of Peter the Great almost made prisoners 

on the Pruth by the Turks .... 
Charles XII. suddenly arrives before the gates of Stral 

sund ........ 

Frederick II. born ...... 

Eousseau flourished . 

Peace of Utrecht ...... 

Frederick William I. king of Prussia 

Peace of Kastadt, between the Germans and French 

The Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples, and Sicily 

given to Austria . ... • , 
The electors of Bavaria and Cologne restored to their 

lands and titles ...... 

Death of Louis XIV. ..... 

George I. of England ..... 

Bishop Fenelon died ...... 



A.D. 

1700 

1700 

1700 

1701—1714 



1701 
1701 
1702—1714 
1702 
1703 

1703 

1703 

1704 

Aug. 13, 1704 

1704 

1704 

1705—1711 

May 23, 1706 

Sept. 7, 1706 

Sept. 24, 1706 

1707 

Apr. 25, 1707 

July 11, 1708 

1708 

1708 

July 8, 1709 

Sept. 11, 1709 
1710 

1710 

1711 

1711—1740 

1711 

Oct. 1711 

Jan. 24, 1712 

1712—1772 

May 11, 1713 

1713—1740 

Mar. 7, 1714 

Sept. 1714 

Sept. 1, 1714 

1714—1727 

1715 



472 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Louis XV. of France ..... 

Philip of Orleans regent ..... 
James (III.) Stuart attempts to regain the throne 
Stralsund surrendered to the Prussians 
[nsurrection in Thorn against the Jesuits . 
AVinkelmann flourished ..... 
Charles XII. killed before Friederichstadt . 
Execution of Baron de Gorz .... 
Sweden surrenders all her foreign possessions except 

Pomerania ....... 

Alexis condemned to death by his father, Peter the 

Great 

Ivlopstock, the poet ...... 

Kant, the philosopher ..... 

Catherine I. empress of Russia .... 

G-eorge II. of England ..... 

Peter II. emperor of Russia .... 

Lessing flourished ...... 

Anna empress of Russia ..... 

The Polish war of succession .... 

Frederick Augustus III. king of Poland 
Wieland lived ....... 

Frederick II. marries into the House of Braunschweig 

Bevern ........ 

Francis Stephen exchanges his dukedoni of Lorraine 

for Tuscany ...... 

Charles VI. concludes the peace of Belgrade with the 

Turks 

Frederick II. ascends the Prussian throne . 

He makes an expedition into Silesia . 

First Silesian war ...... 

Battle of Molwitz. Victory of the Prussians 
Elizabeth empress of Russia .... 

Charles Albert crowned king of Bavaria at Prague 
He is elected emperor of Germany, and reigns . 
His capital, Munich, taken by the enemy . 
Peace of Breslaw ...... 

Maria Theresa crowned at Prague 
French defeated at the battle of Dettingen 
Second Silesian war ...... 

Herder ........ 

Death of Charles VII. at Munich 

Treaty of Fiissen ...... 

Vieiiny of Frederick II. at Hoheufriedberg 

I Jai t le of Kcsseldorf. Frederick marches to Dresden 

Silesia ceded to him in the peace of Dresden . 
Francis I. emperor of German \ 
Victories of the French at Fontenoy, Raucoux, and 

Laffeld 

Charles Edward, son of James, attempts to regain the 

British crown ...... 



A.D. 

1715—1774 

1715—1723 

1715—1717 

Dec. 1715 

1717 

1717—1768 

Dec. 11, 1718 

1719 

1719, 1720 



1724- 
1724- 
1725- 
1727- 
1727- 
1729- 
1730- 

1733- 
1733- 



Sept. 18, 

Oct. 

1740— 

April 10, 

1741— 

Oct. 

1741- 

Jan. 24, 

July 28, 

June 27, 
1744, 
1744— 

Jan. 20, 

April, 

June 4, 



1722 
-1803 
-1S04 
-1727 
-1760 
-1730 
-1781 
-1740 
1733 
-1763 
-1813 

1734 

1737 

1739 
1740 
1740 
1742 
1741 
1762 
1741 
1745 
1742 
1742 
1743 
1743 
1745 
1803 
1745 
1745 
1745 



Dec, 25, 1745 
1745—1765 

1745—1747 

1745 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 473 

A.D. 

Ferdinand VT. king of Spain 1746—1759 

The hopes of the Stuarts destroyed by the defeat of the 

Pretender at Culloden April 27,1746 

Hostilities between the allies and French terminated 

by the peace of Aix Oct. 18— 20, 1748 

Goethe flourished 1749—1832 

Joseph Emanuel king of Portugal .... 1750 — 1777 
An alliance made between Maria Theresa and the 

French king to reduce the king of Prussia to the 

condition of elector of Brandenburg . . . Sept. 1751 

Earthquake in Lisbon ...... Nov. 1755 

Frederick of Prussia is informed of a plot laid against 

him and falls suddenly on Saxony .... 1756 

He marches against Bohemia ..... 1757 

He is victorious at the battle of Prague . . . May 6, 1757 

He is defeated at Collin June 18, 1757 

The French obtain a victory over his allies at Hasten- 

beck July, 1757 

He gains a splendid victory at Ptosback . . . Nov. 5, 1757 
He defeats Daun at the battle of Beuthen . . Dec. 1757 

Adolf Frederick of Sweden 1757—1771 

Frederick of Prussia receives support from England . 1758 

His victory at Zorndorf Aug. 25, 1758 

He is worsted at Hochkirk Oct. 14, 1758 

He is defeated by the Austrians at Kunersdorf . . Aug. 12, 1759 
Ferdinand defeats the French at Minden . . . April 13, 1759 

Schiller flourished 1759—1805 

The Jesuits expelled from Portugal .... 1759 

Charles III. of Spain . . .. . . _ . 1759—1788 

Ferdinand defeats Landon at Leignitz, and regains 

Silesia Aug. 15, 1760 

George III. king of England 1760—1820 

Ferdinand obtains the dearly-bought victory of Torgau Nov. 3, 1760 
Elizabeth empress of Russia dies .... Jan. 5, 1762 

Peter III. emperor of Russia murdered . . . July 9, 1762 

Catherine II. of Russia 1762—1796 

Frederick concludes the peace of Hubertsburg . . Feb. 21, 1763 
The English obtain Canada by the peace of Paris . 1763 

Death of Augustus III. of Poland . . . . 1763 

Poniatowski chosen king of Poland . . . Sept. 1764 — 1795 

Joseph II. ascends the imperial throne of Germany . 1765 — 1790 
Repeal of the stamp-tax ...... 1766 

Christian VII. of Denmark. Struensee his minister . 1766 — 1808 
The General Confederation of Radovi formed . . July 23, 1767 
The Confederation of Bar against Russian supremacy 

in Poland defeated Feb. 1768 

The war between Russia and Turkey . . . 1768 — 1774 

The American war ....... 1770 — 1780 

Gustavus III. comes to the throne of Sweden . . 1771 — 1791 
Moscow visited by pestilence, and civil war in Poland 1771 



474 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



of Poland between Russia, 



Louis XV. orders his opponents in the paidiaruent to 
be arrested ........ 

Neckar's first ministry 

The treaty of partition 

Austria, and Prussia ...... 

Resistance against taxation being shown in Boston, 
the English increase their forces, and shut up the 
harbour .... 

The abolition of the order of Jesuits 

A congress of deputies from the colonies meet to take 
measures against taxation 

Rebellion of Pugatscheff, a Don Cossack 

Louis XV. of France dies .... 

Louis XVI. of Prance .... 

Engagements at Lexington and Bunker's Hill 

Juliana, stepmother of Christian, directs the Danish 
government ..... 

Pugatscheff is betrayed, and suffers death 

Turgot and Malasherbes (ministers) reorganize Prance 

Adam Weishaupt and others found the Society of 
Llluminati ..... 

The English capitulate at Saratoga 

The Bavarian war of succession 

The French form an alliance with America 

Spain allies with America . 

England declares war against Holland 

Joseph II. of Austria 

Neckax obliged to resign his office 

General Cornwallis surrenders to the French- American 
army ......... 

The attempt of the Spaniards to take Gibraltar foded 

The independence of America acknowledged by the 
English in the peace of Versailles .... 

Nicolai of Berlin . 

Crimea conquered by Potemkin ..... 

A democratic insurrection in Holland 

Joseph II. offers the Austrian Netherlands in exchange 
for Bavaria ........ 

The German prelates in the congress at Ems endea- 
vour to become independent of Rome 

Frederick William II. of Prussia restores order in 
lli'lhmd ........ 

The Xetherlanders expel the Austrians from their 
country ........ 

Second Turkish war . . 

Calonne calls an Assembly of Notables : he resigns his 
office ......... 

The boldest speakers against taxation in the parlia- 
ment of Paris are arrested and banished to Troyes . 

Gustavus III. wages war with Russia 



1771 
1771—1781 

Aug. 5, 1772 



Dec. 13, 1773 
1773 

Sept. 17, 1774 

1774 

1771 

1774—1793 

1775 

17/ o 
1775 
1776 

1777 

Oct. 15, 1777 

1778, 1779 

Feb. 6, 1778 

June 26, 1779 

Nov. 1780 

1780—1790 

1781 

Oct. 19, 1782 
Sept. 1782 

Nov. 1782 

1783—1811 

1783 

1784 

1785 

1785 

1787 

17S9 
1787-1792 

Feb. 1787 

Aug. 1787 
1788 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



475 



Brienne compelled to resign his ministry . 
Nectar's second ministry . . . . 

The estates summoned ..... 
Oczakow stormed by Potemkin .... 
A congress and president appointed to manage the 

government of the United States 
Bailli president of the third estate, which declares itself 

a National Assembly ..... 
The Hall of Assembly closed .... 
Mirabeau and citizens oppose the dissolution of the 

Assembly ....... 

Storming of the Bastile ..... 

The equality of citizens declared 
Grustavus meditates war with Prance . 
The Netherlands declare their independence 
Death of Joseph II. ...... 

Leopold II. of Austria ..... 

The fortress of Ismael stormed by Suwaroff 
Feast of the Federation at Paris 
Prince Potemkin, favourite of Catherine II., died 
The death of Mirabeau ..... 

The Poles reorganize then government 
Louis attempts to escape from Paris . 
The Russian party in Poland form the Confederation 

of Targowicz ....... 

Grustavus is murdered by Ankarstrom 

Prance declares war against Austria and Prussia 

A Russian army advances into Poland 

Kosciusko, at the head of the Polish patriots, is defeated 

by the Russians ...... 

The assault on the Hotel de Ville 
The Prussians defeated at Valmy 
Repubhcanism established in Prance . 
Custines obtains possession of Mayence 
Battle of Jemappes ...... 

A new treaty of partition of Poland between Russia 

and Prussia ....... 

Condemnation of Louis . • 

His execution ....... 

Dumourier defeated by the Austrians at Neerwinden 

Chalier the demagogue executed at Lyons 

The Dutch and Hanoverians defeated at Handschooten 

Trial and execution of Marie Antoinette 

The French under Hoche defeated at Kaiserslautern 

Insurrection of the Poles under Kosciusko . 

Execution of Danton and Desmoidins 

Execution of Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI. , 

Jourdain compels the evacuation of Belgium 

The Jacobins denounced in the Convention 

Execution of Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, Henriot 

and others of the Jacobins .... 



Aug. 

1788, 

Dec. 

Dec. 17, 



June 17, 
June 20, 

June 27, 
July 14, 

Aug. 4, 



Feb. 20, 

1790— 

Dec. 22, 

July 14, 

Apr. 2, 

May 3, 

June 21, 

Jan. 
Mar. 29, 

April, 
May, 

July 17, 
Aug. 10, 
Sept. 20, 
Sept. 21, 
Oct. 21, 
Nov. 6, 



Jan. 17, 

Jan. 21, 
Mar. 18, 
July 16, 

Sept. 8, 

Oct. 

Nov. 

Apr. 

Apr. 5, 

May 10, 

June 26, 

July 27, 



A.D. 

1788 
1789 

1788 
1788 

1788 

1789 
1789 

1789 
1789 
17S9 
1790 
1790 
1790 
1792 
1790 
1790 
1791 
1791 
1791 
1791 

1792 
1792 
1792 
1792 

1792 
1792 
1792 
1792 
1792 
1792 

1793 
1793 
1793 
1793 
1793 
1793 
1793 
1793 
1794 
1794 
1794 
1794 
1794 



July 28, 1794 



476 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Defeat of Kosciusko ....... Oct. 10, 

The French compel the Austriaus and Prussians to 

retreat and cross the Rhine ..... Oct. 

Poland divided between Austria, Prussia, and Russia . Jan. 
The assembly house surrounded by the mob Mar. 31, Ap. 1, 

Peace of Basle ....... April 5, 

The insurrection of the 1st Pramal .... May 20, 

The Austrians get possession of Heidelberg . . Sept. 24, 
The Royalists suppressed. Victory of the 13th Ven- 

demiaire ........ Oct. 5, 

Napoleon defeats Beaulieu at Mileshno and Montenotte 
Napoleon's victory at the bridge of Lodi . . . May 10, 

"Wurinser defeated at Castiglione .... Aug. 5, 

Jourdain defeated at Wurzburg ..... Sept. 3, 

Retreat of Moreau through the valleys of the Black 

Porest Sept. 19, 

Peace concluded between the Germans and Prench . Oct. 24, 
The Austrians defeated at Areola, Rivoli, La Fa- 

vorita ....... Jan., Peb. 

Pope Pius VI. concludes the peace of Tolentino . . Peb. 19, 
Emperor Prancis of Austria concludes the peace of 

Leoben with Napoleon ...... Ap. 18, 

The royalist deputies arrested at the Tuileries . . Sept. 4, 
Upper Italy falls to the Prench by the peace of Campo- 

Formio ......... Oct. 17, 

Napoleon opens the congress at Rastadt . . . Dec. 
Pius VI. deprived of his temporal power by the 

Prench Peb. 

Mamelukes defeated by Napoleon near the Pyramids . July 21, 
Insurrection at Cairo against the Prench . . . Oct. 21, 
Rome retaken from the Neapolitans .... Nov. 

The Parthenopeian republic established at Naples . Jan. 
Napoleon marches against Syria .... Peb. 

He besieges Jean d'Acre, but is repulsed . . . Mar. 20, 
Prench defeated at Stockach by Archduke Chaides . Mar. 25, 
The assault on the Prench ambassadors on then de- 
parture from Rastadt ...... Ap. 28, 

The Russians conquer the- Cisalpine republic . . June, 

Cardinal Ruffo storms Naples June 13, 

Napoleon defeats the Turks at Aboukir . . . July 25, 
Pope Pius VI. dies in Paris ..... Aug. 
French defeated at the battle of Novi . . . Aug. 5, 

Russians defeated by the French at Zurich . Sept. 25, 26, 

The Duke of York's retreat from the Netherlands . Oct. 
N a | )i ileon returns to France ..... Oct. 9, 
He forms a new constitution in France, and takes the 

direction in his own hands ..... Nov. 9, 

Victory of Kleber at Heliopolis Mar. 20, 

Death of Suwaroff ... ... May, 

X.ipoleon's passage of the Great St. Bernliard . . May, 
The Austrians defeated at Montebello . . . June 9, 



A.D. 

1794 

1791 
1795 
1795 
1795 
1795 
1795 

1795 
1796 
1796 
1796 
1796 

1796 
1796 

1797 
1797 

1797 
1797 

1797 
1797 

1798 
1798 
1798 
1798 
1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 

1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 
1799 

1799 
1800 
1800 
1800 
1800 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 477 

A.D. 

The rout of the Austrians at Marengo . . . June 14, 1800 
March of Macdonald and Moncey over the Grisons . July, 1800 
Defeat of the Austrians at Hohenlinden ... . Dec. 3, 1800 
Attempt made on Napoleon's life by the infernal 

machine . Dec. 24, 1800 

Peace of Luneville Feb. 9, 1801 

Death of Abercrombie. Battle of Canopus . . Mar. 21, 1801 

The French clergy made subject to the head of the 

Church . . April 8, 1801 

Alexander, son of Paul, declared emperor of Russia . May 24, 1801 
The concordat concluded with Rome .... July 15, 1801 
The French army conveyed by the English from 

Egypt Sept. 1801 

Peace of Amiens Mar. 27, 1802 

Napoleon made consul for life ...... Aug. 2, 1802 

The Imperial Diet (Germany) . . ...... Feb. 25, 1803 

The cantons in Switzerland are made independent . Feb. 1803 
War declared by the English against the French . May 18, 1803 

Napoleon's troops advance upon the electorate of 

Hanover May, 1803 

Execution of the duke d'Enghien .... Mar. 21, 1804 
Napoleon proclaimed emperor ..... May 18, 1804 
Republicanism in Italy changed into monarchy . . March, 1805 

The Austrian general, Mack, shut up in Ulm . . Oct. 14, 1805 

The capitulation of Ulm Oct. 20, 1805 

Annihilation of the French fleet at Trafalgar. Death 

of Nelson Oct. 21, 1805 

Victories of Napoleon over the Russians at Dirnstein 

and Stein Nov. 1805 

Murat conquers Vienna . . . ■ . . . Nov. 13, 1805 

Victory of Napoleon at Austerlitz .... Dec. 2, 1805 

The peace of Presburg ...... Dec. 26, 1805 

The dynasty of the Bourbons ceases in Naples . . Dec. 27, 1805 

Death of Pitt 1806 

Palm, bookseller of Nuremberg, suffers death, because 

he refuses to give up the author of a pamphlet on 

the abasement of Germany ..... Aug. 26, 1806 
The Prussians defeated at Saalfield by the French . Oct. 10, 1806 
The double battle of Jena and Auerstadt . . . Oct. 14, 1806 
Hohenlohe and 17,000 men lay down their arms at 

Prenzlow Oct. 28, 1806 

Napoleon makes a favourable peace with the elector of 

Saxony, who joins the Confederation of the Rhine . Dec. 1806 
The sanguinary battle of Preuss-Eylau, between the 

French and Russians Feb. 8, 1807 

Dantzic surrendered to marshal Lefebvre . . . May 24, 1807 

Napoleon abolishes the tribunate .... 1807 

Peace of Tilsit concluded . . . . . June 7— 9, 1807 
Bombardment of Copenhagen. Capture of the Danish 

fleet by the English . . ', . . . Sept. 2—5, 1807 



478 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

A.D. 
The flight of the Lisbon court to the Brazils. Jimot 

takes possession of Lisbon ..... Nov. 1807 
G-odoy delivers Spain to Napoleon .... Feb. 1, 1808 
Charles IV. abdicates the throne of Spain . . . March, 1808 
1200 French soldiers killed in the insurrection at 

Madrid May 2, 1808 

Napoleon names his brother Joseph king of Spain . June 6, 1808 
The Spaniards driven back at Rio Secco by Bessieres . July 14, 1S08 
Dupont's capitulation at Baylen, in Andalusia . . July 22, 1S0S 

Capitulation of Cintra . ' Aug. 30, 1808 

The celebrated meeting of Erfurt between Alexander 

and Napoleon Sept. 27, 1808 

Napoleon enters Madrid, and restores the crown to 

Joseph Dec. 4, 1808 

Saragossa taken by the English Feb. 20, 1809 

Gustavus IV. and his posterity deprived of the crown 

of Sweden' . . . . " . . . . Mar. 13, 1809 
Austria sends an army into Bavaria and Italy . . 1809 

It suffers two defeats at Abensberg and Eck- 

muhl April 20— 22, 1809 

The two days' combat at Aspern and Eslingen . May 21, 22, 1809 
Napoleon declares the temporal power of the pope to 

have ceased May 27, 1809 

Major von Schill falls during the assault of Stralsund . May 31, 1809 
Pope Pius VII. taken from Borne by violence . . June 16, 1809 
The Austrians defeated at Wagrarn . . . July 5, 6, 1809 

Napoleon unites the States of the Church to the 

French territory ... ... July 6, 1809 

The Austrians conclude the truce of Znaym . . July 12, 1809 

The French defeated by Wellington at Talavera . July 26, 1809 

Death of Sir John Moore at Corunna . . . July 28, 1809 

The attempted assassination of Napoleon by Staps of 

Hamburgh . . Oct. 12, 1809 

Napoleon divorced from Josephine .... Dec. 15, 1S09 
Ilofer, the Tyrolese, shot at Mantua .... Feb. 18, 1810 
Napoleon annexes Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, and the 

duchy of Oldenburg to the French empire . . July 9, 1810 

Bernadotte declared successor to Charles XIII. on the 

Swedish throne . Aug. 21, 1810 

Birth of a son to Napoleon. Receives the title of king 

of Eome Mar. 20,1812 

The French army crosses the Niemen, and enters 

Wilna June 28 -July 16, 1812 

AWllingi on defeats Marmont at Salamanca . . July 22, 1812 

The battle of Smolensk fought Aug. 17, 1812 

The French gain a slight success at the battle of the 

Borodino " Sept, 7, 1812 

The French army enters Moscow . . . . Sept. 14, 1812 

The battle of Malo-Jaroslowetz Oct. 24, 1812 

The passage of the Beresina .... Nov. 26— 29, 1812 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 479 

A.D. 

Prussia forms an alliance with Russia . . . Feb. 3, 1813 

The French victorious in the battles of Liitzen and 

Bautzen May 2 and 20, 1813 

The English gain the battle of Vittoria . . . June 21, 1813 
Austria endeavours to negotiate a peace at the con- 
gress of Prague July 12, 1813 

Austria declares war against Prance .... Aug. 12, 1813 
The Prusso-Swedisb army victorious in the battles of 

Grros-Beeren and Dennewitz . . Aug. 23 and Sept. 6, 1813 

Napoleon wins the battle of Dresden . . Aug. 26, 27, 1813 

Macdonald defeated on the Katzbach, in Silesia . . Aug. 26, 1813 

Yahdamme with his whole army surrounded and made 

prisoners at Culm Aug. 29, 30, 1813 

The allied armies unite in the plain of Leipsic . . Oct. 8, 1813 

The Erench defeated, and suffer severe loss, at the 

battle of Leipsic Oct. 16— 18, 1813 

Victory gained by the French at Hanau . . Oct. 30, 31, 1813 

Blucher crosses the Bhine ..... Jan. 1, 1814 

Norway given to Sweden by the peace of Kiel . . Jan. 14, 1814 
The armies of Blucher and Schwarzenberg meet in 

Champagne, and gain the battle of Brienne . . Feb. 1, 1814 

Napoleon, by the victory of Montereau, drives the 

allied army back on Troyes Feb. 18j 1814 

Blucher gains fresh advantages over the French at 

Craonne and Laon Mar. 7 and 9, 1814 

Negotiations between the allies and Napoleon broken 

off, and his dethronement resolved on . . Mar. 20, 21, 1814 

The allies enter Paris '. Mar. 31, 1814 

Napoleon resolves to abdicate in favour of his son . April 4, 1814 
He is forced to sign an unconditional act of abdication, 

as dictated by the allies ..... Aprd 7, 1814 

The French, under Soult, defeated by "Wellington at 

Toulouse Aprd 10,1814 

Napoleon lands at Elba May 4, 1814 

Ferdinand restores unlimited monarchy in Spain . May 10, 1814 

First peace of Paris concluded ..... May 30, 1814 
Louis XYIII. placed on the French throne . . May 30, 1814 

Napoleon lands on the south coast of France . . Mar. 1, 1815 
Grenoble opens her gates to him .... Mar. 20, 1815 

Murat declares war against Austria, but is defeated in 

the battle of Tolentino _ .May 23, 1815 

The French compel the Prussians to retreat at Ligny . June 16,1815 

Battle of "Waterloo .June 18, 1815 

Napoleon resigns in favour of Napoleon II. . June 22, 1815 

Paris surrendered to "Wellington and Blucher . . July 8, 1815 

Alexander of Bussia, Francis of Austria, and Frederick 

"William III. of Prussia form the Holy Alliance . Sept. 25, 1815 
Napoleon arrives at St. Helena ..... Oct. 18, 1815 
Second peace of Paris arranged . . " . . . Nov. 20, 1815 

Democratic feelings displayed at the festival of the 

Wartburg . Oct. 18, 1817 



480 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



George Sand assassinates the Russian councillor, 

Augustus von Kotzebue Mar. 23, 1819 

Sand is executed ....... Sept. 1819 

Disturbances at Manchester suppressed by the mili- 
tary 1819 

A conspiracy breaks out among the soldiers at 

Cadiz Jan. 1, 1820 

G-eorge IV. king of England 1820—1830 

Assassination of the due de Berri by Louvel . . Feb. 13, 1820 
The king of Prance compelled to dismiss the moderate 

ministry of Decaze ...... March, 1820 

Ferdinand of Spain obliged to summon the Cortes and 

swear to the constitution ..... Mar. 7, 1820 

The act of Vienna restrains the democratic spirit of 

Southern Germany ...... May 15, 1820 

"William Pepe and Carascosa, at the head of insurgents, 

enter Naples July 13, 1820 

George IV. divorces his wife, Caroline of Brunswick . 1820 
The Holy Alliance attempts to stop the liberal move- 
ment * " . . . . Jan. 1821 

John VI. returns to Lisbon, and swears to a new 

constitution for Portugal and Brazil . . . Jan. 26, 1821 
A revolution in Piedmont. Victor Emanuel abdicates, 

and the Spanish constitution introduced . . . March, 1821 

Greece rises in arms ....... March, 1821 

The Piedmontese liberals, under Santa Eosa, resist 

their enemies at Novara ..... April, 1821 

Napoleon Buonaparte died ..... May 5, 1821 

The sacred band, of the Greeks annihilated by the 

Turks in Wallachia June 19, 1821 

Queen Caroline died ....... Aug. 7, 1821 

Lord Castlereagh committed suicide .... Aug. L2, 1S22 

The Holy Alliance requires the Spanish Cortes to alter 

the constitution ....... Oct. 1822 

A Prench army, under the duke of Angouleme, crosses 

the Pyrenees Peb. 1823 

They appear before Cadiz ...... Aug. 5, 1823 

Ferdinand VII. replaced on the Spanish throne by 

foreign arms ........ Nov. 7, 1823 

Byron dies in Greece ...... April 19, 1824 

Don Miguel, having excited a rebellion against his 

father, is banished Portugal ..... April, 1S24 

Louis XVIII. dies Sept. 16, 1824 

Count of Artois becomes kiug of France, as Charles X. May 29, 1825 
Emperor Alexander dies ...... Dec. 1, 1825 

John VI. of Portugal dies Mar. 10, 1826 

Missolonghi taken .... . . April 22, 1826 

The bloody destruction of the Janissaries in Constan- 
tinople ......... June, 1826 

Canning, prime minister of England, dies . . . Aug. 8, 1827 

Battle of Navarino Oct. 20, 1827 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 48} 

A.D. 

Don Miguel, robbing bis niece, Donna Maria, of ber 

rigbt, is proclaimed king of Portugal . . . June, 1828 
Tbe Emancipation Act admits Irisb Catbobcs to par- 

bament 1829 

Capo d'Istria appointed President of tbe Greek State July, 1829 
Tbe Prencb Chambers dissolved ..... Aug. 8, 1829 
Tbe Btissians surmount tbe Balkan .... Sept. 14, 1829 
William IY. on tbe Engbsb tbrone .... 1830—1837 
Frederick of Spain abobsbes tbe Sabc law . . . Mar. 29, 1830 
Algiers taken by tbe Prencb ..... Jidy 5, 1830 
July Bevolution broke out ..... July 26, 1830 

Louis Pbibppe appointed regent .... July 29, 1830 

Louis Pbibppe king of tbe Prencb .... 1830—1847 
A conspiracy against Eussia breaks out in Poland . 1830 

Isabella, daughter of Prederick of Spain, born . . Oct. 1830 
Antwerp bombarded for seven hours by tbe Dutch 

general, Chasse Xov. 1830 

A free constitution given to Hesse Cassel by tbe 

elector, William II 1831 

The emperor of Eussia orders an army of 200,000 men 

to march into Poland ...... Jan. 25, 1S31 

A disturbance excited in Paris on tbe day of the due de 

Berri's death, by the raising of the white flag . . Peb. 15, 1831 

Tbe Eeform Bill passed Mar. 1, 1831 

Insurrections in Paris and Lyons suppressed by mili- 

tarv power . . . ' . . . . 1831, 1832, 1834 

Battle of Ostrolenka May 26, 1831 

Belgium separated from Holland .... June, 1831 

The inhabitants of Warsaw slaughter thirty friends of 

the Bussians. Czartorvski flies to the camp of Dem- 

binski Aug. 1831 

Warsaw and Praga surrender after a storm of two 

days Sept. 6, 7, 1831 

Don Pedro, after a war of two years, compels Don 

Miguel to renounce the Portuguese crown, and leave 

the country 1832—1834 

The Trench seize on Ancona, and keep it several years, Peb. 23, 1832 

Otto elected king of Greece May, 1832 

The Hambacber Pestival, in Ehenish Bavaria . . May 2*7, 1832 
The duchess of Berri unsuccessful in raising Vendee . JSov. 1832 
HoUand desists from the contest with Belgium . . Dec. 1832 
An attempt made by tbe German bberals to disperse 

tbe Diet April 3, 1833 

Prederick YLI. of Spain dies . . . . _ . Sept. 29, 1833 
The Basques, led by Zumalacarreguy and Cabrera, rise 

in favour of Don Carlos Oct. 1833 

Twenty-one persons lose their hves by the attempt of 

Pieschi to murder Louis Phuippe .... July 28, 1835 
Slave Emancipation Bill passed . . . • • Aug. 1835 
Charles X. dies at Gorz 1836 



482 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

A.D. 

Ernest Augustus becomes king of Hanover . . 1837 

Victoria ascends the British throne . . . .June 20, 1837 
The old constitution of Hanover restored . . . July, 1837 
The Carlist leader, Maroto, lays down his arms by the 

Treaty of Pergara Aug. 31, 1839 

Frederick William IV. king of Prussia . . . 1840 

Queen Victoria marries prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, Feb. 10, 1840 
Espartero, duke of Vittoria, eifects the removal of 

Christina, and gets the government of Spain into 

his own hands May, 1841 

The English com laws relaxed ..... 1842 

Duke of Orleans dies from an accident . . . July 13, 1842 
The Greeks from jealousy drive German foreigners 

from their court ....... 1843 

The peace of Switzerland destroyed by a struggle be- 
tween Jesuitism and Radicalism .... March, 1843 

Espartero being overthrown, Christina and her daughter 

carry on the Spanish government .... July, 1843 
The king of Denmark destroys the hope of the Schles- 

wig-Holsteiners of being united to Germany . • July 8, 1846 
Frederick "William IV". makes some concessions to the 

liberal wishes of the Prussians .... 1847 

The Swiss radicals dissolve the special confederation, 

and banish the Jesuits ...... July, 1847 

A confederate army under Dufour subdues Freiburg 

and Lucerne ....... Nov. 4, 1S47 

The other cantons obliged to submit .... Dec. 1, 1847 

The throne of Parma vacant by the death of the 

duchess Maria Louisa ...... Dec. 18, 1847 

Sicily revolts from the king of Naples . . . Jan. 1S48 

Louis Philippe dismisses Guizot, and promises reform, Feb. 22, 23, 1848 
Louis abdicates in favour of the count of Paris. A 

republican government formed .... Feb. 24, 1848 

An insurrection in Vienna causes Metternich to resign 

his office Mar. 13, 1848 

The Prussian government consents to freedom of the 

press, and other reforms ..... Mar. 17, 1848 

Disturbances iu Berlin Mar. 18, 1848 

King Louis resigns the crown of Bavaria to prince 

Maximilian . . ... . Mar. 20, 1848 

After an undecided street fight of fourteen hours, the 

Icing of Prussia grants an unconditional amnesty . Mar. 21, 1S4S 
The Austrian garrisons in Milan and Venice expelled 

by popular insurrections ..... March, 1848 

The' emperor of Austria and court retire to Innsbruck . May, 1S48 
He returns on the invitation of the Diet . . . July, 1848 
Archduke John of Austria is elected regent of Ger- 
many, and enters Frankfurt ..... July 11, 1848 
Eadetzky gains a victory at Custozza . . . July 25, 1848 

The truce of Malmo concluded by Prussia . . A ug. 26, 1848 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 483 

A.D. 

An unsuccessful attempt made by the German repub- 
licans to disperse the National Assembly, and bring 
abont a revolution and republic .... Sept. 18, 1848 

The Austrian mob, enraged at Jellachich taking the 
field against the Magyars, murders Lamberg at 
Buda, Pesth Oct. 3, 1848 

Latour murdered at Vienna ..... Oct. 6, 1848 

Rossi, the pope's minister, murdered . . . Nov. 15, 1848 

Francis Joseph becomes emperor of Austria, Ferdinand 

having abdicated ....... Dec. 2, 1848 

The Prussian government publishes a liberal constitu- 
tion Dec. 5, 1848 

The pope flies to Gaeta. A republic is established in 

Rome ......... Feb. 1849 

Charles Albert takes up arms for the Italians, but is 

soon defeated by Radetzky . . . March 20—24, 1849 

The dignity of emperor of Germany offered to the king 

of Prussia ....'. . March, 1849 

The Danish line-of-battle ship " Christian YIIL," and 
frigate " Gefion," destroyed by the Germans at 
Eckernford . . . . ' . . . . April 5, 1849 

The Hungarian Diet declares Hungary to be indepen- 
dent of Austria, and appoints a provisional govern- 
ment April 14, 1849 

The dissolution of the second, and prorogation of the 

first, chamber of the German Assembly . . . April 27, 1849 

Prince "Windischgratz sent to reduce Vienna . . June, 1849 

The minister, Romer,' puts a stop to the revolutionists, 

and compels them to leave Germany . . , June 18, 1849 

A truce completed between Schleswig and Denmark July, 1849 

The French, after a fierce resistance, get possession of 

Rome July 3, 1849 

Gorgey lays down his arms to the Russians at Vil- 

lagos Aug. 11, 1849 

Venice retaken by the Austrians .... Aug. 25, 1849 



THE END. 



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